As the air of inevitability coalesces around Mitt Romney’s candidacy, Obama’s polling prospects continue to tick upwards as well.
A new Politico/Battleground Poll shows Obama edging Romney 49% to 43% — another in a string of recent polls that have shown Obama leading the former Massachusetts governor by statistically significant margins.
As TPM’s Kyle Leighton reported last week, Obama’s support in general election polling has improved as Romney’s nomination has appeared more and more likely.
The survey also offers clear evidence that Republicans are beginning to accept that Romney will be their nominee — as well as clear evidence that this acceptance vastly outpaces his actual support from voters. The poll finds that Romney is the first choice of 25% of likely Republican primary voters — second to Herman Cain, who garners 27% support, and ahead of Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry, who each pull in 14%.
But when asked who they thought the nominee would be, 48% of respondents said Romney — nearly double the number of voters who said they would pick him as their first choice. By comparison, 22% said Cain — 5% fewer than said they intended to vote for him.
Obama’s support has also improved in hypothetical general election match-ups against a generic Republican. As TPM has pointed out, this may have to do with “the generic candidate…morphing into Romney” in the eyes of Republican voters. The Politico/Battleground Poll adds even more evidence that the matchup is tightening: Obama is in a 43% to 43% dead heat with a generic Republican candidate — still worse than his numbers against Romney, but better than he fared against the generic candidate as little as a month ago, when he lost the contest by an average of eight points according to TPM’s Poll Average.
For the moment, at least, Republican voters are unenthusiastic about the man they suspect will be their nominee. And polling continues to show that this lack of enthusiasm could hurt Romney’s chances in a general election.
The Politico/Battleground Poll was conducted by the Tarrance Group and Lake Research Partners from November 6th to the 9th. Its overall sample of 1,000 live telephone interviews with likely voters carries a sampling error of 3.1 percent. The poll’s subset of 360 Republican voters has a sampling error of 5.2 percent.
