Los Angeles Times
President Obama continues to have trouble in Pennsylvania and Ohio as a majority of voters in those battleground states said that he does not deserve to be reelected, according to two Quinnipiac University polls released on Wednesday.
Obama carried both states in 2008, but the latest polls show that he would have a tough, though not impossible, time repeating in 2012. Still. it takes a candidate to beat a candidate, and in both states Obama is running very slightly ahead of either Texas Gov. Rick Perry or former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the top contestants in the race for the GOP presidential nomination.
Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have made repeated visits to both states, and Biden, the former senator from Delaware, has strong roots in Pennsylvania. But both states have been hard hit in the recent economic downturns, and the midterm elections showed Republicans making strong comebacks winning the governor’s offices and five House seats in each of the states
According to the poll, only 43% of those surveyed in Pennsylvania said they approved of how Obama was doing his job, while 51% said he doesn’t deserve to be reelected. In Ohio, just 42% approved of the job he was doing and 51% said the president should not be reelected.In Pennsylvania, the president leads Romney by 45% to 43%, a virtual dead heat, given the margin of error, and he leads Perry 46% to 40%. In Ohio, Obama leads Perry 44% to 41% and Romney 44% to 42%.
Even though the numbers are similar in Ohio, Perry, as expected, is doing especially well among conservatives.
The Pennsylvania poll questioned 1,370 registered voters between Sept. 21 and 26. The overall margin of error is plus or minus 2.7 percentage points. The poll includes 541 Republicans; the margin of error for questions they answered is plus or minus 4.2 percentage points.
Read more: http://articles.latimes.com/2011/sep/28/news/la-pn-quinnipiac-ohio-pennsylvania-20110928