Kim Geiger: Poll: Romney catches Obama in Ohio, Florida but trails in Pa.

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-poll-romney-catches-obama-in-ohio-florida-but-trails-in-pa-20120503,0,4481711.story

By Kim Geiger

May 3, 2012, 1:39 p.m.

WASHINGTON -- It’s been more than 50 years since a candidate has won the White House without carrying at least two of the three swing states of Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania, and a new poll shows Mitt Romney neck and neck with President Obama in two of them.

Romney, who trailed Obama 49% to 42% in Florida and 47% to 41% in Ohio in late March, is now statistically tied with the president, 44% to 43% in Florida and 42% to 44% in Ohio, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll of voters in the three states.

Obama, however, has improved on his lead in Pennsylvania, where he beats Romney 47% to 39%, up from the 45%-42% lead he enjoyed in March.

Quinnipiac surveyed 3,467 voters in the three states in interviews on cellphones and land lines from April 25 through May 1. The results of the survey, which has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.9 percentage points, led Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the university’s polling institute, to conclude that Obama is doing “slightly better” than Romney in the three states.

“What appears to be keeping Romney in the ballgame, at least in Florida and Ohio, is the perception he can better fix the economy,” Brown said.

A majority of voters surveyed – at least 67% in each state – said they economy was in a recession, but at least half said recovery had begun. In Pennsylvania, voters were divided over which candidate would do a better job on the economy. In Florida and Ohio, more voters thought Romney would do a better job.

Asked whether they believe the Supreme Court should overturn Obama’s healthcare law, a signature achievement of his administration, 51% in Ohio and Florida and 46% in Pennsylvania said they thought it should be overturned.

The poll found Obama continuing to perform better than Romney among women. Pennsylvania women in particular are “wild” about Obama, supporting him 52% to Romney’s 35%.

Still, the 8-percentage-point margin Obama enjoys in Pennsylvania is 3 percentage points lower than his winning margin there in the 2008 election.

kim.geiger@latimes.com

Joshua Miller: Kentucky: Dueling Polls in 6th District

http://atr.rollcall.com/kentucky-dueling-polls-in-6th-district/

By Joshua Miller Posted at 3:12 p.m. on May 1

Updated 4:00 p.m. | Just how competitive is the race in Kentucky’s 6th district, where four-term Rep. Ben Chandler (D) faces a rematch with attorney Andy Barr (R)? That depends on which poll you believe.

Chandler’s campaign released a poll Monday showing him with a 24-point lead in a head-to-head matchup with Chandler, 54 percent to 30 percent.

But a poll from Barr’s pollsters had the Republican trailing Chandler by only 7 points, 49 percent to 42 percent.

What might account for the difference? Chandler’s pollsters, Mark Mellman’s the Mellman Group, surveyed 400 voters representing the “likely 2012 electorate” in late March, while Public Opinion Strategies, Barr’s pollsters, surveyed 400 “likely 2012 voters” in late February.

In the Democratic poll, Obama won a horse-race matchup against presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney in the district, 47 percent to 42 percent with 11 percent undecided.

In the Republican poll, Obama’s job approval was 39 percent and his disapproval was 59 percent, with 45 percent strongly disapproving of his job performance.

Robert Blizzard, a vice president at Public Opinion Strategies who conducted the poll for Barr, questioned the results of Mellman’s poll.

“How is it possible that President Obama — who only received 45% in this very district in 2008, in the best Democratic year in a generation — is doing BETTER now?” he asked in an email to Roll Call. “That just doesn’t make sense, especially given that Kentucky voters strongly disapprove of the job the President is doing and the state has one of the highest disapproval ratings of Obama of any nationally.”

“When a pollster shows numbers that defy conventional wisdom, in this case that Obama is beating Mitt Romney in a Kentucky congressional district, it should make you question the findings of the entire survey,” Blizzard wrote.

In an interview, Mellman pushed back. “I don’t want to get into the tit-for-tat because it’s unseemly,” Mellman said. He noted his firm’s success of getting numbers right, even when other pollsters had different figures — in particular Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s 2010 re-election race.

“I think we’re right and they’re wrong,” he said with a chuckle.

Roll Call rates the race as Leans Democratic. Influential Republicans in the state continue to believe that Barr’s best chance at defeating Chandler was 2010 and that he doesn’t have what it takes to win this cycle.

Both polls had a margin of error of 4.9 points.

Read the dueling memos here:

Clarification: An earlier version of this post did not clearly state that 45 percent of those polled in the GOP survey strongly disapproved of the president’s job performance. Obama’s total job disapproval number in the district, according to the POS poll, is 59 percent.