The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Saturday shows Mitt Romney getting 50% of the vote while President Obama received only 42%. Four percent say they would vote for a third party candidate, and three percent are undecided.
This was the third time to date that Republican challenger Mitt Romney crossed the 50% threshold against the president in Rasmussen’ Poll. It happened at the end of a week in which President Obama received much media praise for his endorsement of gay marriages.
Still, in a Gallop poll, a majority of Americans, 60%, say Obama’s newly announced support for same-sex marriage will make no difference to their vote.
Of the remainder, 26% say it will make them less likely to vote for Obama, but it should be noted that about half of the “less likely” group are Republicans who probably would not support Obama anyway.
Only 13% say Obama’s statement on gay marriages will make them more likely to vote for him.
Gallop’s daily tracking shows Obama leading Romney 46%-45%.
The Associated Press/GfK poll shows an Obama lead of 50%-42% over Romney.
But the polls are closer together on the economy.
According to Rasmussen, only 37% of likely voters nationwide give the president good or excellent marks for his handling of the economy, down from a two-year high of 42% in March. Forty-eight percent say he’s doing a poor job on the economy.
And according to Gallop, registered voters are more likely to say that if Mitt Romney is elected president he would do a very good or good job on the economy than they are to say President Obama would, if re-elected – 61% vs. 52%. Twenty-two percent of voters think Obama would do a “very poor” job, more than twice as many as say the same about Romney (10%).
According to Gallop, the voters’ greater likelihood to say Obama would do a “very poor” job with the economy comes partly from the large percentage of Republicans who say this – 46%. This compares with a much smaller 20% of Democrats who say the same about Romney.
There is near-unanimity in the five major polling services over whether the country is on the right track: between 56% and 63% say the country is on a wrong track, compared to between 31% and 37% who think it is on the right track.