The presidential horse race polls have bounced around a decent amount this cycle. And the current numbers rely particularly on two generally right-leaning pollsters, Fox and Rasmussen. But Gallup’s numbers out this morning make it look like Mitt Romney may be garnering real advantage from finally (all but officially) clinching the GOP nomination. As I noted earlier, Romney is up by almost four points over the President in the latest TPM PollTracker Average.
So what’s up? There’s little in the news that would point to an obvious reason that President Obama is doing worse. Indeed, what appeared to be the main drag on his numbers — rising gas prices — has stopped, at least for the moment. What has changed is the degree of divisions within the Republican party. If Santorum is throwing in the towel, that tells all Republicans that it’s either Romney or Obama. And for all but a few Republicans that’s not even a question.
As recently as a few weeks ago, the major quality polls were showing substantial (high single digit) leads for the President. So we’ll have to wait for another of these to see whether this is just noise or a trend. But it’s a wake up call for anyone who thinks this isn’t going to be a hard fought campaign.
