As President Obama headed to Florida Tuesday to push for millionaires to pay more in taxes, a new poll showed him with an edge over Mitt Romney of greater than 2-to-1 when voters considered their personal traits.
But while the Washington Post-ABC News poll found the President to be far superior in terms of personal attributes, it also showed that the campaign’s central issue — the economy — is still very much a cause for concern for Obama.
When pollsters asked participants which of the two “seems like the more friendly and likable person,” Obama came out on top by the surprisingly high margin of 64% to 26%.
When questioned as to whether the Democratic president was more inspiring than his presumed GOP challenger, Obama prevailed 55% to 29%.
The poll of 1,103 people by telephone last week found Obama with a double-digit lead over the former Massachusetts governor in eight categories — including addressing women’s issues (53% to 44%); representing the middle class (49% to 39%); and confronting health care issues (48% to 38%).
The results supported the notion that Romney’s image has been hurt by the bruising GOP primary battle, Rick Santorum’s insurgent campaign and, perhaps most importantly, several of his own verbal slips that have allowed rivals to portray him as a tone-deaf, multi-millionaire who is out of touch with middle- and working-class voters.
Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, said the poll showed nothing the Romney campaign doesn’t already know.
“There’s something about Romney, I think the combination of wealth and his person, that just combines to make him a curiosity at times,” he said. “There is odd behavior there — when he walks into a room, there’s a reason why people are always talking about him as an automaton.”
In recent weeks, as the Romney campaign has increasingly pivoted toward the general election, it has seemingly gone on a blitz mode to make the buttoned-down former corporate turnaround artist appear more like a regular guy.
They have put more focus on his wife, Ann Romney, and the couple’s sons, all of whom come off as more appealing than the candidate himself.
“They’ve got to find ways to humanize him — bringing out [his\] grandchildren would be another way to do that,” Sabato said. “It’s hard to not be normal when you’re around little kids.”
But the polls findings on economic issues were encouraging for Team Romney.
The issue of job creation had Obama with a slight edge, 46% to 43%. But on the topic of handling the economy in general, Romney had the advantage, 47% to 43%. And perhaps his best number came in his approach to curbing the staggeringly high federal deficit, with Romney enjoying a 12-point cushion, at 51% to 38%.
On the biggest issue, however, the poll found that if the election were held today, Obama would win 51% to 44%.
Sabato, for one, believes the only way that disadvantage will turn in Romney’s favor would be if the economy nosedives — making the GOP challenger’s business cred a better selling point.
“That’s the only way Romney could win, but he’s never going to be better liked,” he said.
No comments:
Post a Comment