The topline results of the new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll show President Obama leading Mitt Romney by six points, 49% to 43%, which is up from a three-point lead the incumbent enjoyed a month ago. Perhaps more importantly, the poll found the president with an eight-point lead in 12 battleground states.
But there was another detail that jumped out at me.
Romney's overall favorable/unfavorable score remains a net negative – a trait no other modern presumptive GOP presidential nominee (whether Bob Dole, George W. Bush or John McCain) has shared.... In fact, Romney would be the first GOP presumptive presidential nominee since 1996 to head into his nominating convention with a net-negative favorable/unfavorable score.
I put together a chart showing the favorable/unfavorable ratings for Obama, Romney, Vice President Biden, and the two major parties. The GOP nominee clearly isn't faring well.
What's more, the number of people with no opinion is extremely small (only 2%). I mention this because Romney isn't suffering because Americans haven't heard enough about him -- folks know exactly who he is and have formed opinions accordingly. (Also note, a majority of respondent (52%) said Romney lacks "a background and set of values" they can identify with.)
This hardly means Romney's a sure-fire loser. If the American mainstream is deeply dissatisfied with the status quo and blames the president, even if he doesn't deserve it, voters may very well hold their nose and elect the guy they don't like.
But the fact that people don't seem to like him makes his task inherently more difficult.
As we've discussed before, at a certain level, factors like favorable/unfavorable ratings may seem irrelevant. After all, presidential races aren't personality contests.
Except, a lot of the time, like it or not, they are personality contests. Think about how many times you've heard about which candidate voters would prefer "to have a beer with."
Especially in the television era, the candidate who's better liked is generally better positioned to win, and at least at this point, voters' perceptions of Romney just aren't favorable at all. After nearly six years on the national campaign trail, Americans don't seem to like the guy.
Markos dug up another interesting tidbit: "It turns out that [John] Kerry, according to NBC polling, never had a net-negative favorability rating.... For all the comparisons with 2004, that's one big difference -- Kerry was far better liked than Mitt Romney. And Kerry wasn't exactly beloved."
For all the comparisons of 2012 to 2004, Americans had a more favorable impression of Kerry than Romney.
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The inherent difficulty is more general than just Romney's unpopularity: he is, in fact, less underwater than the Republican Party as a whole. That is an entirely different headwind -- even if Romney somehow found a personality, he still has an "R" after his name, which is also a net negative. As it should be.
I'm a little bit surprised to see the VP with a higher unfavorable. I know..he has his issues..but I'll take his gaffes over Cheney's ...everything..any day.
particularly since he's been on fire lately. his response to the "Anglo-Saxon" comment was spot on, and his speech at the NAACP was incredible.
I agree, Biden is a basically good guy, a family man who comes from working class. He has an endearing way of saying things and he makes sense. He just said the Republicans believe in top down and we believe in the old fashioned way, from the middle out. Makes so much more sense to help people get into the middle income, not wishing and hoping some crumbs from the top falls into your hands.
Gosh, Romney's not a "likable guy"? Who knew?
I wonder if Madcow noticed the 11 point advantage in dimbocrat participation, I am sure she just scanned over that
You'd think the Republicans would take advantage of the fact Romney has the personality of a 50's TV robot. Who hated 50's TV robots? Of course, he is a LYING 50's TV robot and that hurts quite a bit.
Nobody hated the robot in Lost In Space -- but that was before it had Zachary Smith's brain transferred to it.
I think that robot was much too personable. It was, afterall, a 60's TV robot. However, I'm sure I'm a little behind on my TV robot history and I seem to vaguely recall that that particular Lost in Space robot might have been used in some 50's shows. Whatever, the particular lineage, it clearly was more advanced in personality that Romney3.0.
The thing that's starting to scare me is how many rabidly anti-Obama types are out there -- the hatred is SO freaky, it boggles the mind.
Check out the following to see what I mean...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/carsmarkwg/7634641522/ ... and look how many groups this particular photo is in... o_O
That's been going on for four years. I wonder if showing that stuff to the nation would actually help Obama in showing the absolute unbounded nutty extremism of the wingnuts.
I think most people have absolutely no idea about the level of hatred that is out there. This seems like the kind of wingnut that would be dangerous... check out his profile. I'm really surprised that flickr allows this kind of thing. I would think hate speech should be right out... very disappointing!
It's not surprising at all and I have a lot of faith still in the American electorate. We are being led (sic) by a president who thinks being in charge of the US is a rhetorical position, has shown his true colors regarding race relations, is more in line with the elitists he aspires to in Hollywood and everywhere else than the common man he claims he represents and tries desperately to parry attention from his absolutely awful management of this nation's economic failings in the past two years (giving him the benefit of the doubt on the first two. Obama continues to put his foot in his mouth ("If you are a business owner, you didn't do it yourself" paraphrase) and in doing so insults the individuals who and principles which have previously elevated this nation to the top. Rabid dislike and mistrust of Obama should only be expected to get worse. He has shown his effete, snobby underhandedness to the entire nation too often.
Well, magpie, I have a question for you. Did this type of thing scare you for the same reasons when it was done to Bush? I bet not. In fact you probably showed this type of stuff to you friends and had a hearty laugh about it. But disparage the image of Obama and it becomes scary?
.
Typical leftist - hypocritical double standard.
Wow... the right-wing trolls are thick as thieves on here these days... I guess they must be the ones who are really scared... I feel much better now.
Not really, I can't speak for the others, but MadCow just invites us here ex officio her hatred for us.
"Mad Cow"? I have no idea what you're going on about... now you are scared of cattle? How interesting... you guys are funny.
well, he's always got jennifer and kathleen over at the wapo.
The only people who claim to like Romney are those who don't know him yet, and those who like him because he has an (R) after his name, period. Oh, and probably most of the people wearing magic underwear.
The more he tries to hide his personal finances and distance himself from his own record, the less people will like him. His unfavorables will only go up.
I'm waiting for the debates. If Romney is smart, he'll insist that they be conducted by conference call.
He's been successful. Get over it. The tax code favors the rich. Get over it or change it. Obama is "likable" because of personality and family. That wears thin when you see how a person performs. So far, he's been a neutral. I know, he got Bin Laden. What about unemployment? And, don't give me Bush.
The Boehner economy of 2012 is a scandal and is what the country gets with a GOTea House obstructing every attempt to solve the problems 30+ years of failed conservative ideas and policies have caused. Just like Boehner and McConnell wanted it. Republican obstruction at funding the public sector is costing 2 percentage points in employment. It's a scandal that's too huge to fathom in terms of human misery.
Boehner's obstruction => Boehner economy and unemployment of 2012.
And sorry Tom, you don't get to say what evidence the other person can use. Bush is directly responsible for the mess. And this Boehner House is preventing solutions to the mess.
- Economic Downturn and Bush Policies Continue to Drive Large Projected Deficits — Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
- What’s Driving Projected Debt?
Make sure to check out the pretty pictures to see how your Team is responsible.
Are we also supposed to "get over" the fact that Romney and his pals shattered the global economy and insisted that the be financially rewarded and fulsomely praised for doing so?
Tom - "what about unemployment"? It continues to amaze me that conservatives so indignantly ask this of Democrats, while ignoring that their own party is deliberately keeping people out of jobs for no reason other than that the GOP doesn't want the jobs picture to further improve before the election.
"What about unemployment"? -- the Obama administration and congressional Democrats managed to create in the neighborhood of 3 million to 6 million jobs before the House Clowns took over. That was enough jobs to replace those lost in the Bush recession, and the plan was to keep right on going to create even more. Right now, Boehner, Cantor and Mitchell are sitting on Democratic legislation which CBO predicts would create at least a million jobs and lower the unemployment rate by a full percentage point. So, please, if you're going to ask "where are the jobs," direct the question to the GOP, which is purposefully blocking job-creation legislation for no justifiable reason.
@Tom Re: #7.2
Well ------- What about unemployment?
I think of jobs as a crop. Crops grow well or fail because of a lot of factors - (including rainfall - wow are things looking bad!!).
Take a look at data on FRED website at historic employment data:
http:/
/research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/
Here is what I did:
Ignored the years when we were recovering from the 2001 recession and after Dec 2007 (beginning of the Great Recession).
This removes the periods when - using the crop analogy - we were planting and fertilizing like crazy (recession recovery) and also the period when the hail storm had hit.
So - 2004 to 2006.
Compare this period with job growth now (2011 - current) {note 2010 is goofy because of the huge spike in temporary census jobs with subsequent losses}
The data looks very similar.
Conclusions:
Our crops (jobs) are not growing any better now than back in 2004-2006. Crops were doing much better during 1994-1999.
Our big problem now is that so much of the crop was destroyed in the hail storm (Great Recession). We have done some planting and fertilizing but not enough to catch up (hence unemployment over 8%)
The questions:
What are the factors that are adversely affecting crop (job) growth - that was better in the 1990's? Have we changed underlying growing conditions that we had during 2004 - 2006 - or are they essentially the same - and does this explain the similar dismal crop (job) growth.
maphi, I thought the 90s felt like things were booming and FRED confirmed that. Gee wasn't when taxes were higher and we created jobs, Silcon Valley, then poof the jobs started exiting. Was that GATT, NAFTA and deregulation?
Anyhow, Tom- the Bush factor IS a fact that led to this situation and the graph Disgusted posted shows that as well as maphi's.
Now you might not like to hear about that stuff because it's true and there is no way to say Obama caused the 2008 "crash" or whatever you want to call it. Remember? It was just about 4 years ago when all hell broke loose. BEFORE Obama. We nearly fell into another Great Depression and you think that is going to get smoothed over quickly after the 2010 Congress slammed on the brakes and built walls to stop, even digging more pits to fall into with calls for more job cutting and basically not to do anything helpful until the election.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-creamer/republicans-attempt-to-ac_b_1576962.html
Voters have a hard time liking Mitt because Mitt Romney is not a normal American. He is an out of touch multi-millionaire that has never had to experience the true struggles of daily American life in his entire privileged existence. Mitt may try to cover his platinum soul, but his taxes and his record at Bain offer great insight into his character and background. Mitt Romney has probably led to more layoffs of working Americans than any man in this country. His entire tax policy platform is designed to give rich guys like himself as many tax cuts and government giveaways as possible. http://www.sunstateactivist.org
The only statement I disagree with is this one:
It is clear that the actions or Romney and Bain Capital led to workers losing jobs.
It is also clear that fundamental principles of Romney and Bain Capital did not consider workers losing jobs to be a concern.
To the individual workers that were affected, Bain Capital was the hand of doom.
But I personally think that Bain Capital was just a little blip in the overall trend that has led to massive jobs lost.
The reason Bain Capital gets more attention than a little blip deserves is that Romney uses his experience there to claim he should be President.
This guy has such an obvious vacuum in his head: it must measure at least 10E-7 torr (Can we get a bar graph on that Steve Benen?). It's hard to spin complete liar with little or no real human experience as part of the middle class with "job exporter" and vulture capitalist and come up with a net positive! Talk about a tough job, I don't envy the man nor his team!
Rasmussen differs:
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Wednesday shows Mitt Romney attracting 47% of the vote, while President Obama earns support from 44%. Five percent (5%) prefer some other candidate, and four percent (4%) are undecided.
Likeable? Hummmm, would you call Joe Torre charming, charismatic, visually likeable, great open personality? Maybe not, but he is one of the best managers the NY Yankees ever had.
Maybe the better question is:
Can Romney manage?
You're not going to get a fair and honest answer here. But the answer is yes. He is a success. Anyone else you can name who was a Governor of a state and they didn't accept a paycheck???????? 4.7% unemployment when he left Mass ....it's 6.2 under Deval Patrick.
I like the Joe Torre comparison. Stoic. Not flashy but man oh man can he manage a Win! You wanna likeable guy like say, Jimmy Carter? Or a doer, a manager.
If, let's just say IF, Obama loses. There's still an open spot on the American Idol panel of judges, right?
IrishPat - did you really think we're all not well aware that Rasmussen is the "Fox News" of pollsters? Come on, give us a little more credit than that. The rest of your points are just as tilted. Did Romney have to deal with a Republican-created massive economic downturn? No. And he still managed to bring Massachusetts in 47th out of 50th nationally in job creation. I hardly refer to that as a success.
That depends. With or without the power to fire members of the Legislature and Courts?
June, 4.7% IS equivilant to zero. There is no job growth necessary. It is the nominal borderline, you are never going to get to 0%. It's not possible. The job market becomes stagnant. And he was working with an 85% or greater democratic state house. Not too shabby. He was affective. Comparably, at 6.2% now Mass is low on the national scale, again, it's hard to beat the Patrick numbers too. Although below 5% would be better viewed.
It's like a major league pitcher who's ERA maybe above 4. At 4.56. But if he's winning at a high percentage, 19-10, who cares? He's an All Star
As Rasmussen, at least he doesn't poll on the plus side of parties. He draws an even distribution and his numbers are a greater reflection of "reality". I would contend that Rasmussen is more reliable. We can differ on that. That's Ok.
The Joe Torre comparison still works.
Thanks for demonstrating that the English were right about the Irish when it comes to granite-skulled Irish idiots. There's nothing on earth as dumb as a dumb Mick. Thanks for embarrassing the rest of us, auld sod.
You could just say you don't agree with the statment or don't follow the logic. But ya' know, IrishPat7 from the Granite State of NH is a "Granite skulled Irish Auid Sod Idiot". I'll see if I can get that on a bumper sticker. If I can, you want one? Yours can say, "I know a ......"
Then again, some of the Irish have a deep abiding faith in what it means to be authentically Irish. Others, are of the lesser, or the homogenized ilk/blend. For which they have no use of the spirit or truth of what being Irish genuinely intends. If the first is defined as being a Dumb Mick, then I'll hold my ground on the auid sod.
Didn't Obama claim to be Irish?
Leave it to you to be too thick to get a joke, stknmov.
Irish, get better polls or look at the others to get an idea how far in the bag Rasmussen is. It ALWAYS skews right; it's like the first question they ask in the survey is "Do you watch Fox News for your information?" and if the answer is no, they discount the survey.
Yes stnkmov, Obama did suggest he had Irish heritage. I think he's of the "ilk or blend" which has been swayed by marxist influence. A very common mistake both in the USA among Irish Americans and in the old country as well.
grumpy, as a Yankees fan and as a NY Giants fan, if I want true authentic up to the minute analitical accuracy on spports news. I do not go to ESPN or Fox or NBC ect. I go to Yankees and Giants dot com. Are they partisan? Yes. Are the others responsible and fairly accurate? Yes. But often the sports news there is skewed or tainted with some excess in opinion. in similar manner, if I want honest & accurate detailed polls I go to Rasmussen. Like Yankees and Giants dot com he is the most reliable and up to the minute accurate. If I want to know how A Rod broke his hand and to what extent he's going to be missing from the lineup and how that will affcet the Yankees, I go to Yankees dot com. Pure news not hype or flash or excess in opinion oriented fluff.
Same thing, I go to Rasmussen, he was perfectly correct and accurate on Wisconsin when Walker won the recall vote. msnbc and wash post , nytimes and cnn polls were garbage. Rasmussen rules!
And Rassmussen shows Obama with 242 electoral votes either strong or leaning as well as leads in MI and PA....per Nate Silver Rass. is +3 R.
Gallup is 46/46 And NBC/WSJ is O+6, up 3 since June, same as CBS showed...
Irish Pat....Rick Scott of Fl. takes no salary either. He has similar job numbers to Romney in Mass. His popularity runs somewhere between hemorrhoids and herpes.
Isn't that what you guys said about Scott Walker?
Hemeroids aside, as herpes is contracted as an STD an judging by how much people like sex, and the fact that 64% of college aged freshman (females alone) entering college HAVE an active STD, maybe that equation becomes a plus for Scott of FL.
We like Scott like an STD, just goes with the territory, we Love Sex. Sandra Fluke does! And Scott doesn't cost a cent in payroll or salary! Equals,
FREE SEX
Romney needs to get some bad habits. I mean, look at Justin Bieber. The poor lad, he's trying so hard to prove he's not a lesbian. Fist fights, bad driving, and on. The least Romney could do is have a beer and say "crap" once in a while. It might make him seem more human.
The writing may (may not be) on the storefront windows. Neither of our TWO local township republican organization (that's because the tea partiers can't get along with the moderate/conservatives) have Romney signs in their windows. We keep checking, but a higher ranking local rep has always told as - anyone but Romney. Although are area did elect all Romney delegates.....go figure.....
I just love it when wacko Liberals give advice to Conservatives.
Like we listen to you nuts.............
So what you're saying, sweetie, is that America should be run by the "cool" kid instead of the geek who really knows how business works?
Been there, done that. Like most of the "cool" kids who are all flash and no substance, this one has proven himself to be a total failure.
America needs someone who can get our economy back on track..even if that someone is plain vanilla.
Even Chuck Todd said this poll was nonsense since it oversampled democrats by a large margin (+11). So, reading the bar graph, Obama's favorable/unfavorable is 49/42 (+7) and Romney's is 35/40 (-5). The end result is a +12 advantage for Obama on this issue. However, if you scale back on the number of democrats sampled (to a more realistic 36% instead of 46%), it can be hypothesized that Obama would be underwater 39/42 and Romney would be above water 35/30.
Good observation. Did you ever expect anything else from the left? they truth and facts.
What is true of elections in general may not hold true for this specific election. Consider: The economy is rotten, and the incumbent has a record so bad he can't even run on it.
On the question of who is responsible for the mess, hefty majorities now say Obama is; "blame Bush" has run out of gas. And on the question of who is more likely to get us out of our economic mess, voters clearly choose Romney.
So maybe this election will be an exception to general trends. While Obama might be the guy you'd rather have a beer with, he might not be the guy you'll trust to fix the economy. Not after four years of trying, trying, trying again -- without success.
It's not surprising at all and I have a lot of faith still in the American electorate. We are being led (sic) by a president who thinks being in charge of the US is a rhetorical position, has shown his true colors regarding race relations, is more in line with the elitists he aspires to in Hollywood and everywhere else than the common man he claims he represents and tries desperately to parry attention from his absolutely awful management of this nation's economic failings in the past two years (giving him the benefit of the doubt on the first two. Obama continues to put his foot in his mouth ("If you are a business owner, you didn't do it yourself" paraphrase) and in doing so insults the individuals who and principles which have previously elevated this nation to the top. Rabid dislike and mistrust of Obama should only be expected to get worse. He has shown his effete, snobby underhandedness to the entire nation too often.
It has just been ascertained that one of the many stinking by-products of Obamacare is going to be that 30% of employees on private health insurance will likely have NO INSURANCE by 2014. It was all part of the plan that Obama's ilk were sure would happen when shoveling together the most underhanded legislation ever to pass in Congress. This administration might as well call itself the Socialist Party of America - Obama's unmentioned push is to make as many of us dependednt on the government as possible so we can become the sheep of the nation rather than its citizens. Another case in point! He has lowered the requirement to get on food stamps resulting in 12 million more getting handouts.
He aptly should be remembered as the "Food Stamp President"
http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/health-365467-states-insurance.html
No it has NOT been ascertained anything. That is a survey that is at odds with nearly all others on the subject...
Mr. Benen:
Unfortunately for your man o'bama, we aren't choosing a Prom King. We are deciding on the future of The United States of America.
Like MSNBC is one to worry about someone else's unpopularity. They should worry about their own unpopularity. Some of the lowest viewer ratings on cable and always shown to be liars in their reporting and editorials. The Leftist/Socialist propoganda spewed by the cable channel and website, along with no talent reporters and commentary shows their ineptitude in all things that the American people care about.
Interesting effort, but your reasoning is empty unless your premise is sound. Where in the world do you get your data, Mr. Benen? The most recent NY Times poll (not something nefarious and scary like Fox, but the venerable left-wing shill New York Times) found as of July 25th that Mr. Obama was at 36% favorable / 48% unfavorable: a net NEGATIVE 12, using Registered Voters. Rasmussen Reports uses Likely Voters and found 26% strongly approve vs. 41% strongly disapprove, for a Presidential Approval Index of NEGATIVE 15.
Your chart shows Obama with a net positive of 5. That's fully 17 points away from the NYT data, and 20 points away from Rasmussen.
Garbage in, garbage out. Start with accurate data and reason from there. It might not help you sleep as well at night, but it would make for something a little more substantive than this fairy tale.
Mitt Romney was snubbed By UK Government "As Cabinet Minister Tells HuffPost 'Our Heart Is With Obama'"