Mitt Romney is effectively tied with President Obama in the presidential race, with a statistically insignificant 47 percent to 45 percent edge in Gallup’s first daily tracking poll for the general election.
Other numbers in the poll suggest that talk of Romney being bruised by the extended primary has been overblown. Republicans are quickly consolidating around Romney, with 90 percent of them now saying they’d back him — the same percentage of Democrats that back Obama. Among independents, Romney is up 45 percent to 39 percent despite talk that his move to the right during the primaries was alienating them.
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History shows that the candidates’ positioning in the spring of an election year is not necessarily good at forecasting the election outcomes. For example, in an April 20-22, 1992, Gallup poll, incumbent President George H.W. Bush was ahead with 41% of the vote, compared with 26% for Bill Clinton and 25% for Ross Perot. And in an April 11-14, 1980, poll, incumbent President Jimmy Carter led Ronald Reagan by 42% to 34%, with John Anderson receiving 18% support. Both Bush and Carter, of course, ultimately lost their re-election bids.
More numbers here.
UPDATE: Other polls are less positive for Romney. A CNN survey gives Obama a 52 percent to 43 percent lead and an ABC News/Washington Post poll finds that, “Mitt Romney has emerged from the Republican primary season with the weakest favorability rating on record for a presumptive presidential nominee in ABC News/Washington Post polls since 1984, trailing a resurgent Barack Obama in personal popularity by 21 percentage points.”
