Obama 44%, Romney 41%
President Obama and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney continue to run neck-and-neck in a hypothetical Election 2012 matchup.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national survey of Likely U.S. Voters shows the president’s support at 44%, while Romney earns 41% of the vote. Seven percent (7%) prefer some other candidate, and another seven percent (7%) are undecided. (To see question wording, click here.)
Given the margin of error, the two men remain basically tied. Romney continues to be the Republican hopeful who runs most competitively with the president
A week ago, Romney posted a 43% to 40% lead over Obama. But less than three weeks earlier, Obama led the unsuccessful 2008 GOP contender 43% to 39%.
Obama now leads Texas Governor Rick Perry, the frontrunner for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, 46% to 39%. Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, another GOP hopeful, trails Obama by double digits. The president tops former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, a long shot for the Republican nomination, 43% to 35%.
The president continues to trail a generic Republican candidate in weekly Rasmussen Reports matchups, but he earns 39% to 46% of the vote against named Republican challengers. Despite those relatively low levels of support, Obama has never trailed a Republican by more than three percentage points and has enjoyed large double-digit leads in some matchups.
Rasmussen Reports will release its latest findings on a hypothetical matchup between Obama and a generic Republican candidate at 3 pm Eastern today. We will provide new data on this generic matchup each week until the field of prospective Republican nominees narrows to a few serious contenders.
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The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on September 18-19, 2011 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.
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