Given the early date, polling can be all over the place but it’s worth taking a look at the trends now to see where things allegedly stand.
Report from USA Today:
Six months out, it’s a tie.
The first USA TODAY/Gallup Swing States Poll since the GOP settled on a presumptive nominee shows big challenges for each side: Mitt Romney in generating enthusiasm and a personal connection with his supporters, and Barack Obama in convincing Americans he should be trusted to manage a fragile economy.
The president and the former Massachusetts governor start their head-to-head contest essentially even among registered voters — Obama 47%, Romney 45% — in the dozen battleground states likely to determine the election’s outcome. That’s closer than the lead of 9 percentage points for Obama in the Swing States survey in late March.
But the poll also finds a reversal in what has been a key GOP asset in the five previous battleground surveys taken since last fall: an edge in enthusiasm among voters. For the first time, Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say they are extremely or very enthusiastic about voting — a shift from a 14-percentage-point GOP advantage at the end of last year to an 11-point deficit now.
I am not sure I buy the claim over the enthusiasm gap. For Republicans weary of President Obama’s policies, November of 2012 couldn’t some soon enough. The enthusiasm may be growing more on the Democratic side as the election dominates the news cycle. Furthermore, some of the perceived lack of enthusiasm on the GOP side could be due to a reluctance of conservative voters to immediately coalesce around Romney as the nominee. This will change in due time. Whatever the case may be, don’t expect there to be a serious lack of enthusiasm among either side come November.
