The controversy surrounding GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain has, thanks to Rick Perry’s debate meltdown, been at least temporarily overshadowed. But beyond making life difficult for Mr. Cain, it’s also influenced another development: a resurgence in President Obama’s poll numbers.
As Cain and Perry have stumbled, Mitt Romney has once again remained above the fray. And after watching candidate after candidate crater all around him, there is a growing sense among GOP voters that despite his flaws, the former Mass. Gov. will indeed be the nominee.
But if GOP voters are starting to grudgingly coalesce around the idea that Mitt will be their man, it doesn’t yet look like that’s improving his polling against the man he would eventually face.
On Wednesday of last week a Quinnipiac national poll showed the President’s approval rating rising while he led Romney nationally by five points, outside the margin of error. Five days later an NBC/WSJ poll showed the same trend, as Obama expanded his lead on the former Mass Gov. from 2 points to 6 in that poll. In both cases none of the other GOP candidates came close to the President.
This Wednesday Gallup dropped a poll showing a near majority of Republicans think that Romney will eventually be the nominee (three times as many as the next candidate, Cain), evidence that as other options in the GOP race start to fall away, Romney seems likely to be their candidate.
The next day, Gallup released new data polling Obama versus a generic Republican, which for the last year has been the only hypothetical contest that Obama has consistently lost. But in this week’s matchup, Obama actually took a one point lead against the faceless Republican, a major change in Gallup’s tracking, which had the generic candidate ahead by eight points just a month ago.
It’s a sign both that Obama’s message on jobs is resonating, but also that GOP voters increasingly have a sense of who their nominee will be. It seems that as the race moves along, and a Romney–Obama matchup becomes more likely, the generic candidate is morphing into Romney. And as that happens, Obama starts to do better.
The TPM Poll Average shows the Obama–Generic matchup tightening, just as the national Obama–Romney one is. See below:
Of course, this battle is not fought nationally — swing state polling from this Thursday morning shows the race will be very close and along traditional lines. But a clearer picture is starting to emerge in the national race as the GOP field sorts itself out.
