It’s a bounce.
President Obama’s standing in the national presidential race has improved after a well-received Democratic National Convention, according to a new national poll from CNN.
Obama leads Mitt Romney 52 percent to 46 percent among likely voters. In CNN polling from a week ago, after the Republican National Convention, both candidates were tied at 48 percent.
“The convention energized-at least temporarily — the Democratic base, as more Democrats (59%) than Republicans (57%) seemed to be enthusiastic about voting,” CNN wrote in its analysis. “This marks a turnaround from last week, when the number of Republicans who said they were extremely or very enthusiastic about voting was six points higher than for Democrats.”
Obama has also moved up in the daily tracking polls, hitting a 5-point lead in Gallup’s seven-day average and a 5-point lead in Rasmussen’s three-day sample. The CNN poll also showed an improved favorability rating for the president. Fifty-seven percent of respondents view him favorably, compared with 42 percent who view him unfavorably. Obama’s favorability rating had been ticking down slightly before the convention.
On Monday Romney campaign pollster Neil Newhouse argued in a memo that Romney would win the race despite any polling gains from a post-convention bounce. But the memo itself contained few numbers to support that assertion, and mostly relied on the idea that voters will reject Obama based on the economy.
But the CNN analysis said the DNC had “wiped away some of Romney’s gains on personal qualities. The Republican nominee’s favorable rating increased to 53% after the GOP convention, but fell to 48% one week later after the Democratic event. Meanwhile, Obama rose to 57% in the last week, his highest mark since 2010.”
In CNN’s last poll, Romney was seen as the stronger leader. That metric snapped back to an Obama lead after the DNC, with 50 percent of likely voters saying the president is a stronger leader, compared with 44 percent who believe Romney is stronger.
The CNN poll used 1,022 live telephone interviews with Americans (765 by landline, 257 vai cell) conducted Sept. 7-9. A smaller group of 709 were likely voters, which has a sampling error of 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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