President Obama is up 7 points in Colorado over Republican nominee Mitt Romney, 49 percent to 42 percent, but the former Massachusetts governor’s favorability rating is bouncing back, a new poll of the swing state from Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling (PPP) shows.
“Mitt Romney’s looking more competitive in Colorado now than he did a couple months ago but Barack Obama is still the clear favorite there,” said Dean Debnam, president of PPP, said in a release. Obama was up 13 points in PPP’s previous poll of Colorado, conducted in April.
The Colorado numbers are a microcosm of how the race has evolved over the last month — Romney’s stature with general election voters has increased as he’s regaining near uniform support from Republicans after the messy primary process, and independent voters are warming to him. PPP noted that Romney’s favorability is up a net 37 points with GOP voters since its last survey, while voters in the middle are taking a second look. From PPP:
Romney has also been improving with independents, who make up over a quarter of the electorate. That is where he has made up ground head-to-head with Obama, as his share of the Republican vote (84%) is essentially unchanged. What was a 26-point deficit with independents in the previous survey is now only 10. Romney’s net favorability with them is up 23 points at the same time as Obama’s net approval rating has decreased 21 points with them.
Obama leads Romney among independent voters, 48 percent to 39 percent. Obama also gets 60 percent of Latino voters, up from 53 percent in the April poll, while Romney has moved from 38 percent two months ago to 33 percent among Latinos. The PollTracker average of the presidential race in Colorado shows Obama with a 4.7 percent lead.
The PPP poll used 799 automated interviews with registered Colorado voters conducted from June 14-17. The sampling error is 3.5 percent.
Kyle Leighton
Kyle is the Editor of TPM Media’s PollTracker. He graduated from Beloit College (WI) and began working in politics before getting an M.A. in magazine journalism from New York University, where he interned at TPM and the website of The New Yorker.
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