Friday, November 20, 2009

PPP: Romney does best against Obama with key Independent voters

(PPP).Barack Obama's still leading all of his top potential opponents for 2012, but with his approval rating nationally below 50% for the first time his margins against a couple of them have dropped below what he won against John McCain last fall.

For the eighth month in a row Mike Huckabee comes the closest to Obama of the leading GOP hopefuls but for the first time he has company in Mitt Romney. Both of them trail the President by five points, Huckabee by a 49-44 margin and Romney by a 48-43 spread.

The key to Huckabee's strong performance is that he does the best of the Republican candidates we tested with the party base, taking 87% of the GOP vote in a head to head with Obama. There is some bad news for the former Arkansas Governor in the poll too though, as his favorability has moved slightly into negative territory by a 37/36 margin. This is the first time Huckabee has been in the red on that front.

Romney's strength in his best performance yet against Obama is with independents. While the other GOP candidates trail by 7-9 points with them Romney is at just a 44-42 deficit. His favorability numbers in the poll are less than impressive though, with 30% of voters holding a positive opinion of him to 39% negative. That has a lot to do with fewer than 50% of Republican voters saying they have favorable opinion of him.

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"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty" (Churchill)