The 12 point lead that President Obama enjoyed over Mitt Romney in a Pew Research Center poll last month has now narrowed to four points, and as a WashingtonPost/ABC News poll last week suggested, one of Obama’s vulnerabilities may be that Romney runs almost evenly with him among voters who rank the economy and jobs as the issue “very important” to their vote.
That underlines a point that Pew Research Center president Andrew Kohut made in a piece on the New York Times website on Tuesday in which he wrote, “Obama and Romney both carry so much political baggage that one or the other will have to defy modern political history to win in November.” For Romney, the problem is his personal favorability ratings are lower than any candidate who has won the presidency. For Obama, the challenge is that “no incumbent president has ever won re-election with unemployment rates as high as they are likely to be in November.”
Obama’s lead over Romney in the April 4-15 Pew poll stands at 49 percent to 45 percent. The margin of error is 2.1 points.
Last month, Obama had led Romney by 54 percent to 42 percent, and by 52 percent to 44 percent in February.
Eighty-six percent of voters said the issue most important to their vote was the economy and 84 percent said the same about jobs. The top three following that were the budget deficit (74 percent), health care (74 percent), and education (72 percent).
At the bottom of voters’ agendas are some of the social issues that became hot-buttons this year — gay marriage and birth control, (the latter issue being one that was sparked by an Obama administration rule that, in its original form, required religious-related institutions to provide health coverage to employees for contraception).
Last week’s Post/ABC News poll gave Obama a bigger lead over Romney — 51 percent to 44 percent — Romney was more trusted than Obama on handling the economy by a 47 percent to 43 percent margin. On jobs, Obama had a bare lead of 46 percent to 43 percent over Romney.
The Pew poll also had the two men closely matched on these issues. Obama had a 48 percent to 44 percent advantage over Romney on the economy, while Romney edged Obama 48 percent to 47 percent on jobs.
The bigger issue gaps between them were on health care (voters preferred Obama by 54 percent to 39 percent) and handling the budget deficit, (Romney led Obama by 57 percent to 38 percent).
Now that the GOP nomination contest is all but settled, 65 percent of Republican and Republican-leaning voters say they will unite behind Romney. But Pew found that the enthusiasm of Republicans is limited: even though his last major opponent, Rick Santorum, suspended his campaign, Romney is the choice for the nomination of 45 percent of Republicans while 46 percent would like to see Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul or someone else get the nomination.