President Obama leads Mitt Romney by a slim two percentage points in a survey of voters in 12 states deemed to be ones that will likely decide the 2012 election, according to a poll released Monday.
Mr. Obama leads Mr. Romney, 47 percent to 45 percent, across the states, which include Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin, according to Purple Strategies, a bipartisan public affairs firm. The margin is identical to the two-point margin — 48 percent to 46 percent — that Mr. Obama had last month.
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Voters disapprove of Mr. Obama’s job performance by a three-point margin — 49 percent disapprove and 46 percent approve. But they don’t much like Mr. Romney: 41 percent have a favorable impression of him, versus 49 percent who have an unfavorable impression.
Still, Mr. Romney holds a 5-point lead among independent voters, 47 percent to 42 percent. And just 28 percent of voters think the economy is improving, compared to 42 percent who think it’s getting worse.
Mr. Obama leads in two of the three most closely-watched states: he has a 3-point lead in Ohio, at 48 percent to 45 percent, and a two-point lead in Virginia, at 46 percent to 44 percent. Mr. Romney, meanwhile, has a 3-point lead in Florida, at 48 percent to 45 percent.
The poll, conducted from July 9 to July 13, has a weighted sample size of 2,412 likely voters, with an error margin of 1.6 percentage points. Regional and state-level samples have error margins of 4.0 percentage points, and the sample size for Ohio, Florida, Virginia and Colorado is 600 per state. The poll was conducted using automated telephone interviews and random digit dialing.
