In a potential Election 2012 matchup, the president posts a 48% to 42% lead over former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. Former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum trails the president by eight, 49% to 41%.
This is the first time since February 3, shortly after the Florida primary, that Romney has been closer to the president than Santorum (see tracking history). In polling conducted February 2-3, Santorum had a one-point advantage over the president. However, he quickly fell back and has now joined Rick Perry, Herman Cain, and Newt Gingrich who led the president once in a single poll but could not sustain it.So now Romney and Santorum are both behind by 8, with a statistically-meaningless single point difference in the numbers. And Rasmussen continues to be the joke of the polling world.
Pew released a new poll today, showing bad news for the Republicans in the Presidential race. While the main focus is on Santorum's rise against Romney, Pew also shows an eight-point lead for Obama:
The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted Feb. 8-12 among 1,501 adults, including 1172 registered voters and 552 Republican and Republican-leaning voters, finds that Barack Obama holds sizable leads over Santorum, Romney and Newt Gingrich in general election match-ups. Obama leads Santorum by 10 points among all registered voters (53% to 43%) and his lead over Romney is nearly as large (52% to 44%). Romney ran about even with Obama in November and mid-January.
Quite a trend there for Obama against Romney. And the new-found enthusiasm from the Republican base over Rick Santorum isn't helping him in the general election match-ups. Maybe that's because what sells big in the Republican bubble really isn't that appealing outside of the bubble. If Rasmussen is correct in his numbers (big "if"), then 35% of the electorate is Republican - and likely voters are even higher than that. Best case is that Santorum is pulling only 8% of the voters that do not already self-identify as Republicans. And Romney's only pulling 9% outside of the base - unless that 4% who "Don't Know" are all Republicans.
So, how is Romney doing with Independent voters?
Romney has turned a 12-point lead with Independents into an 8-point deficit, in one quarter. And now we are going to see social conservative issues dominate the Republican primary campaign, which always turn off Independents. Both Santorum and Romney have been harsh, strident, and unequivocal in their constant denunciations of Obama - and Obama has been improving his standing.
The Republican delusion is that, once the RNC is over, the Republicans will join as one and denounce Obama with even scarier, crazier, and more vicious attacks than ever.
And, naturally, since the nation takes the opinion of the Republican Party very seriously, the voters all gasp in horror that they ever could have considered voting for someone the Republicans hate that much. Obama loses.
The bottom line is that everyone has heard this crap before. If you didn't believe it before, you won't believe it now. Judging by Pew's polling results, these attacks currently are believed by ...44% of the country. And that number seems to be declining.
Maybe it's because the socialist Muslim hell that the Republicans all swore would happen, really didn't. Everything isn't nationalized, there are no FEMA "death camps", nobody is rounding up gun owners or taking their guns away, there is no hyper-inflation caused by Stimulus spending, there is no tyrannical government regulating every aspect of your life, and people aren't being forced into "collectives". Obama hasn't turned out to be dictator.
So we've heard all of that scary crap before. The conservatives, the Tea Party, the entire wingnut radio industry, and the Republican elected officials all were completely wrong. No Apocalypse. No dictatorship. At no point did these things even threaten to be concerns, much less accurately depict the current reality.
