Former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney may have kept a low profile during the debt debate, only to criticize the final product, but it seems to have worked for him in a new Quinnipiac poll of the key swing state of Florida.
The new poll is really two polls. The report included one survey of registered voters from July 27th to the 31st, before a debt deal was announced, and then a second survey from August 1st to the 2nd. President Obama registered a negative approval rating in both, but fared well in the matchups with GOP presidential candidates. Obama has a lead outside the margin of error in all except for one: the August 1st – 2nd trial heat against Romney, which showed a tie at 44 percent. Obama still leads in the TPM Poll Average of the matchup 44.5% to 43%.
Romney has shown some strength in the polls against Obama in swing states before. But the Florida poll shows something new: the displacement of Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) in favor of almost-candidate Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Bachmann registers only six percent in the GOP presidential survey, which was good for only 5th place. Perry was at 13%, one of only two contenders in double digits, with Romney at 23%.
Bachmann doesn’t do very well against Obama either, with the President getting 50% in both surveys versus Bachmann’s 36% and 38%. Perry actually became more competitive after the debt deal was announced, as Obama led that matchup 49 – 36 in the July 27th to 31st survey, and 44 – 39 in the August 1st to 2nd one.
Here’s where you can take a look at the TPM Poll Averages of potential Republican candidates against the President in Florida.
The Quinnipiac polls utilized 674 telephone interviews with registered voters in the July 27th to 31st survey, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.8 percent, and 743 telephone interviews in the August 1st to 2nd one, which had a 3.6 percent sampling error. The GOP primary numbers come from telephone interviews with 510 registered Republican voters with a margin of error of +/- 4.3 percent.
Follow this reporter @kyleleighton.
