Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Obama leads GOP foes

For the first time since February Barack Obama leads all of the top Republicans for 2012 in hypothetical contests. He's up 46-45 on Mike Huckabee, 46-44 on Mitt Romney, 49-42 on Newt Gingrich, 50-43 on Sarah Palin, and 46-28 on Gary Johnson.

The fact that Obama still leads all of these match ups even during an election year that seems likely to be very bad for his party speaks to the weakness of the Republican field. Palin and Gingrich are easily the best known of the Republicans but it's not a good thing in either case. Palin's favorability is a negative 37/56 and Gingrich's is a negative 29/48. Voters are more evenly split in their feelings about Huckabee and Romney but each of them is also an unknown to about a third of the country.

This is the 14th time we've conducted this poll now and Huckabee has been the strongest Republican almost every time. In addition to coming the closest to Obama, he's also the only one of the GOP hopefuls with a positive favorability rating (33/30).

Obama's position against the top Republican contenders is obviously weaker than the performance he had against John McCain in 2008 when he won by 7 points. But given the current political climate he's doing alright.

Full results here

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

Gary Johnson?????

Anonymous said...

Hey, how about polling Mississippi ?

It has never been polled since the 2008 election.

Unknown said...

Obama is only beating a weak field by a few points, mainly because people don't think much of the Republicans. What if the Republicans actually find a candidate people like? There are a number of dark horses that people don't know. There probably won't be one with Palin's charisma, Huckabee's sense of humor, Gingrich's smarts, and Romney financial expertise. But then no one knew all that Obama had to sell America in May 2006.

Anonymous said...

The 2012 polling is back to normal in May. In April, PPP had all Republicans within the margin of error. Was the April polling just a fluke?

Brandon K said...

Is it too much to ask for an Arkansas, Pennsylvania, PA-12, and Kentucky poll this weekend?

Tom Jensen said...

Too much to ask for all but we will do PA-12 and KY GOP.

Anonymous said...

For the GOP field, we have 2 tiers. The first tier has Romney & Huckabee, who are within the margin of error with Obama. Then you have the 2nd tier containing Newt & Palin. The 2nd tier has consistently lagged behind Obama by 7-9 points for the past 6 months. April appears to have been a fluke.

Unknown said...

There has been a significant amount of Senatorial polling and it shows that incumbents are in trouble, with Democrats in the most trouble. There has been scant little House polling. When you do one of these Senate polls could you do multiple House races in a state to provide a broader picture? There are a number of good races in PA and a couple in KY.

PNC said...

I think Obama will perform significantly *worse* than he polls right now when the 2012 election campaign actually begins.

Much of his advantage right now is simply due to the fact that he's an extremely well-known incumbent running against an uncertain pick from a gaggle of lesser-known potential opponents.

That advantage will decrease when the GOP finally settles on an opponent for him and the GOP candidate starts campaigning against him in earnest.

Anonymous said...

Why wouldn't you do KY-DEM? Polls have Paul expanding his lead so why focus on this race?

Skyorbit said...

Ron Paul was with-in the margin of Error for Obama too.

Anonymous said...

KY-Dem is more important. SUSA has Mongiardo only up by 1 pt. Paul has big lead. although it's not very relevant who the Dem nominee will be because it's extremely hard to believe that Kentucky will elect a Dem to senate in '10 after giving McCain 58%.

Christian Liberty said...

Obama loses to "someone else"

http://politipage.com/2010/05/10/someone-else-tops-obama-46-42-in-latest-poll-of-u-s-jewish-voters-after-winning-78-in-08/

Anonymous said...

Given the fact that there hasn't been a single Republican that has of yet publicly announced his/her candidacy in running for the Presidency in 2012, the numbers that you have come up with are of little, if any, meaningful value. After all, 21/2 years is still a long ways off. All one has to do is to think back to 2006 when Barack Obama was barely on the radar screen, to realize just how premature this poll is. In fact, in August of 2007 Obama was trailing Hillary Clinton 25%-45% (-20), in a C.B.S News poll. Get it? As for Sarah Palin, I very seriously doubt that she will, in fact, be running for the presidency. And if she did, I am absolutely convinced that she wouldn't stand a chance in being nominated-PERIOD! In fact, you can, for all practical purposes, remove her from the list of viable presidential candidates. Beyond Palin, it's any one's guess as to who will ultimately emerge as the front runner for the Republican Party's nomination. But I will say this; who ever it is that finally gets nominated, Republicans and conservatives alike will almost unanimously coalesce in support that candidate. Count on it!

 
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