Romney and Huckabee Now Lead Obama in Potential 2012 Presidential Race
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
April 16, 2010
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — New polling data from the Public Policy Polling national survey finds four of the potential Republican candidates are now tied with pro-abortion President Barack Obama in preview of the 2012 election. The pro-life movement will be working overtime to support one of the pro-life candidates against Obama due to his extensive pro-abortion record.
Obama trails Mike Huckabee 47% to 45% and Mitt Romney 45% to 44%, the new poling data shows.
The abortion advocate is tied with Newt Gingrich 45% to 45%, and leads Sarah Palin 47% to 45%.
"This is the weakest performance Obama’s posted in these 13 monthly surveys and a pretty clear indication that passing health care has not done anything to enhance his political standing, at least in the short term," the polling firm says in a statement. "Whereas in previous months a good number of the voters disapproving of his job performance weren’t ready to commit to voting Republican in 2012 yet, now 85-89% of them do in each of these hypothetical contests."
"That suggests that even if Obama’s overall unpopularity has not increased, the intensity of it has," PPP noted.
PPP points to one example: Among voters who disapprove of Obama but also have an unfavorable opinion of Sarah Palin, she leads him by 22 points in a head to head contest. That wasn’t necessarily the case in previous months.
Looking at the Republicans alone, Palin and Gingrich are the most popular among Republican voters…and the least popular overall among all Americans. While 71% of GOP folks have a favorable opinion of Palin just 38 percent of all Americans do while 52% of voters having a negative opinion of her.
Romney and Huckabee are less popular within their own parties than Palin and Gingrich but have better overall favorability numbers among all Americans.
Ed Morrissey of the conservative Hot Air blog commented on the new numbers.
"All of the GOP candidates mentioned in the PPP poll have net negative favorability ratings (Romney -9, Palin -14) except Huckabee, who has a +1," he noticed. "Note, too, the big improvement in Palin’s numbers. She may trail, but that’s well within the margin of error. She closed the gap quickly, and it appears to have coincided with the passage of ObamaCare."
Morrissey points out that Obama is unable to get more than 47 percent of the vote against any of the potential Republican nominees.
"That should have red flags waving at the White House’s political operation. When an incumbent can’t get to 50%, it’s a clear sign of trouble for the next election. They have two years to fix the problem, but for a first-term president, this looks pretty bleak," Morrissey said. "At the rate this administration has lost credibility with the electorate, Democrats may be lucky to have a straight party split by 2012."
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