President Obama leads Mitt Romney by 2 points in Iowa, the state where Obama won the nation’s first caucus in 2008, according to a new poll . That’s down from a 5-point lead in PPP’s July poll, and a 10-point lead in May.
Obama gets 47 percent of the vote among likely voters and Romney gets 45 percent in the poll from Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling. Voters disapprove of the job the president is doing by a 45 approve/50 disapprove split. Romney has made great strides on his personal rating — he’s improved from a 37 favorable/55 percent unfavorable split in PPP’s July poll to a 47 favorable/48 percent unfavorable rating now.
“Barack Obama’s lead in Iowa has steadily declined in our polling over the last three months,” said Dean Debnam, president of PPP, said in a release. “He still has a narrow advantage, but it’s clear that the state deserves its perceived swing state status.”
Overall the presidential race in Iowa is extremely close in the PollTracker Average of all public polling, with the president up 0.7 percent in the Hawkeye State.
Independent voters favor Obama and are more skeptical about Romney. The president leads among unaffiliated voters by a 13-point margin, 49 percent to 36 percent.
PPP noted that wind energy, an important local issue, could explain Obama’s lead despite voters being dissatisfied with his overall performance:
Wind energy remains a hot topic among voters in Iowa. The poll finds 54% of Iowans support the tax credit for wind energy production companies. Wind energy in Iowa is one of the fastest-growing industries in the nation, and after Romney dismissed the importance of wind energy earlier this month, only 37% of voters support Romney on the issue, while 47% trust Obama. This comes with 68% of Iowans finding wind energy an important issue in their state.
The PPP poll used 1,244 automated interviews with likely voters via landline (automated surveys are prohibited from calling cell phones) conducted Aug. 23-26. It has a sampling error of 2.8 percent.
