Toledo Blade...
Obama keeps lead as Romney focus wavers
President up 6 points in national polls
By James O’Toole, Block News Alliance 

Despite the worst economy in most voters’ memories, Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, trails President Obama in most national surveys.

This week, NBC News and the Wall Street Journal released a new presidential poll showing President Obama with a six-point advantage over his Republican challenger -- the same margin, the Journal noted, as four previous NBC/WSJ polls over the last year 

On Wednesday, Public Policy Polling issued surveys of voters in Pennsylvania and Michigan. In Pennsylvania, the results precisely mirrored the new national survey, 49 percent for the President and 43 percent for Mr. Romney. In Michigan, the incumbent’s lead looked slightly more secure, at 14 percentage points. 

The independent but Democratic-leaning firm noted one more common thread in recent statewide and national polling. 

“We last looked at each of these states in May,” Public Policy Polling president Dean Debnam said in a release accompanying the new numbers. “Speaking to the stability of the presidential race over the last couple months, the Michigan result is exactly identical to the last poll, and the Pennsylvania poll differs only slightly from Obama’s 50-42 advantage on the previous one.” 

A poll released last week from Rasmussen Reports shows Mr. Obama with a lead in Ohio over Mr. Romney 47-45 percent. 

The survey of 500 likely voters in Ohio also found 5 percent prefer another candidate and 4 percent are undecided. 

The poll was conducted on July 18 and has a sampling error of 4.5 percent, which puts the results well within the margin of error. 

Despite the worst economy in most voters’ memories, the President has retained a tenuous lead in most national surveys although his advantage was slightly greater in the NBC/WSJ snapshot than in some other recent national polls. 

The average compiled by RealClearPolitics showed him with an advantage of just 1.3 percent and the most recent daily tracking polls from Gallup and Rasmussen Reports showed the Republican with a small lead. But a common denominator of almost all recent polling is the depiction of a fairly static race with national margins within or near the margins for error for most surveys. 

“There’s such a sharp partisan divide and most people are already locked into their candidates,” said Brad Coker, managing director of Mason-Dixon Polling & Research. “There’s maybe 10 percent who are still persuadable. I tell people it’s 45-45 and a jump ball for the rest.” 

Mason-Dixon’s most recent survey of the key Florida battleground showed a race essentially tied in a state Mr. Obama won narrowly four years ago. In Ohio, a Quinnipiac University poll found Mr. Obama with a nine-point advantage in one survey in mid-June, but that was an outlier to most recent polling in the crucial state, with an handful of subsequent polls showing Mr. Obama with leads consistently within the surveys’ margins for error. 

This stability in state and national results has persisted in the face of a cascade of what would seem politically influential events -- the Supreme Court’s health-care decision and the persistently somber economic news -- and airwaves in battleground states awash in an unprecedented flood of advertising dollars. 

This consensus has barely moved despite weeks of the Obama campaign’s withering criticism of Mr. Romney’s business record with Bain Capital and the Romney forces more recent portrayal of Mr. Obama as a champion of government who does not understand how businesses are built. 

The actions of the rival campaigns suggest the attacks may have registered in their internal poll numbers. Mr. Obama felt compelled to air a new commercial attempting to rebut the Romney attacks. Mr. Romney has complained the Bain and tax return questions amount to demonizing his success. His campaign’s decision to leak a suggestion that former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice might be his running mate was widely seen as an effort to shift the campaign focus from his business and tax record. 

But the overall impression left by the race so far is one that is as static as it is angry. Polling experts point to several reasons for the at least temporary stability, adding the early jousting is giving the relatively small pool of undecided voters clues that may take some time to consider. 

Both the NBC/WSJ poll and a recent CBS/New York Times survey did find that both candidates had seen an erosion in their approval ratings in recent weeks... 

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