***Election Day is less than two months away and, with that in mind, we bring you the first installment of what will (hopefully, potentially, maybe) be a daily look at the newest political polls ahead of this November’s election.***
—The latest Gallup poll shows President Obama extending his lead over Mitt Romney among registered voters. A dead heat as recently as two weeks ago, the post-convention split has widened to 6 points. It’s now 50 to 44, advantage POTUS. Gallup also has the president’s approval rating 7 points in the black, 49 percent approving to 42 percent disapproving.
—Rasmussen Reports, meanwhile, paints a starkly different picture of both the state of the race and the president’s approval numbers. The polling outfit has Romney plus-1 (47/46) in the general, and Obama’s disapproval rating out-pacing its counterpart 51 percent to 49.
—Finally, Real Clear Politics may provide the clearest (sorry, had to) look at the electorate’s current opinion of their president. Based on the average of all the major recent polls, the RCP approval numbers shake out to 49.1 approve, 47.3 disapprove. In the general election, the data shows a slim 3.3 point cushion for Obama, 48.6 percent to Romney’s 45.3.
—On a state-by-state level, most of today’s polls lean in Obama’s favor as well, although that is mostly because of where the pollsters were looking. Quinnipiac University has him up 28 points (62/34) in New York, Survey USA has him at plus-22 (57/35) in California, and PPP has the president up 7 points (51/44) in Minnesota. Obama also holds a comfortable lead in Romney’s home state of Michigan, where EPIC-MRA has his lead in the double-digits, 47 percent to 37.
In the traditional battleground states of Florida and Ohio, however, the two candidates remain mostly deadlocked. Rasmussen has Obama up 1 point (47/46) in Ohio, and two (48/46) in Florida. Meanwhile, AIF/McGlaughlin has Romney leading by 3 (50/47) in Florida.
