Magellan Data and Mapping Strategies has a new poll out for Florida, generally regarded as a crucial swing state, and occasionally seen as the swing state. In certain elections, its 29 electoral votes dangle like chads.
It doesn’t look as if 2012 will be one of those elections. Magellan provides these grim numbers for the President’s extremely well funded, but sputtering, re-election campaign:
Obama Job Approval: 37% approve, 57% disapprove
Image Rating: 40% favorable, 55% unfavorable
Deserves Re-Election: 37% yes, 57% no
Magellan goes on to describe the mood in Florida as “sour,” with “only 20% of respondents thinking things in the country are heading in the right direction, and 72% thinking things are off on the wrong track.” While this is seen as bad news for all incumbents, the President in particular is in “net-negative territory among all voters and key voter subgroup constituencies.”
Of the leading Republican candidates, Mitt Romney fares best with a 38-40 image rating, followed by Rick Perry with 33-30, and Michele Bachmann at 33-43. All of them have much lower disapproval numbers than Obama, and much higher percentages of “no opinion” responses, which is not too surprising for candidates vs. an incumbent. Perry has the highest “no opinion” total at 28%.
In head-to-head matchups, all three candidates win Florida against Obama. Romney wins by 10%, Perry by 7%, and Bachmann by 1%. Only Romney wins every category of voter, while Bachmann is the only one who loses independents. Romney and Perry do extremely well with seniors, winning them by 15 and 12 points respectively. Seniors are a much more reliable voting group than young voters, where Romney and Perry basically tie Obama, but Bachmann loses by 12%. Interestingly, all three Republican candidates wallop Obama among Hispanic voters, with Romney winning them by a remarkable 62-23.
Incumbent Democrat Senator Bill Nelson is also in bad shape, with 27% approval vs. 38% disapproval, and a rather painful 27% expressing no opinion of the senator they elected in 2000. The only GOP candidate tested against Nelson was the legendary Jenny Rick, who would win the election 43-38, but will not be on the ballot.
This comes on the heels of another ugly state poll for Obama, in which he scored 41% approval vs. 48% disapproval in Pennsylvania, and only earned 43-50 re-election numbers. The Electoral College means the presidency is lost state-by-state… a process well under way for Barack Obama.
