President Obama comfortably leads a slate of potential 2012 Republican challengers, not because he is particularly strong, but because his potential challengers are so weak, according to a new PPP poll of registered voters nationwide.
Obama posted a fairly middling approval rating in the poll, with both 47% of respondents approving of his job performance, and 47% disapproving. Yet each of the GOP candidates tested against him fared much worse, with none of them earning a net positive favorability rating.
Obama led Mitt Romney 47% to 42%, and topped Mike Huckabee 48% to 43%. Against Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin, Obama posted much larger leads of 11 and 15 points respectively.
And for the first time, PPP included pizza magnate and radio talk show host Herman Cain as well as former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, both of whom have signaled that they will run for president. Neither of them polled close to Obama — in part because over half of respondents didn’t know either of them — with Pawlenty trailing 47% to 33%, and Cain lagging 47% to 29%.
The problem for each of those Republicans is that the percentage of people with an unfavorable opinion of them heavily outweighed the percentage who view them favorably.
Mike Huckabee came closest to breaking even, with 35% of respondents viewing him positively, and 42% viewing him negatively. Romney fared slightly worse, with a 32%-44% split. At the low end of the spectrum, nearly six in ten respondents viewed Palin and Gingrich unfavorably.
Even Cain and Pawlenty, though barely known, prompted more thumbs down than up — three times as many people viewed Cain unfavorably (29%) as viewed him favorably (9%).
The PPP poll was conducted March 10-13 among 642 registered voters. It has a margin of error of 3.9%.
