Polls

Florida Senate candidate Kendrick Meek (D) is trailing as President Obama prepares to travel to Miami to raise money for Democrats.

Mitt Romney continues to lead the pack of potential Republican challengers to President Obama in 2012, while more Democrats are starting to favor a new candidate. 

Romney has the support of 21 percent of respondents in a new CNN/Opinion Research poll released Friday. Sarah Palin was the respondents' second favorite at 18 percent and Newt Gingrich was third with 15 percent. The survey of close to 500 Republicans was conducted Aug. 6-10, which means it doesn't reflect any possible fallout from Marianne Gingrich's interview with Esquire magazine.

Meanwhile, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee fell from being the pack leader in April with 24 percent to getting only 14 percent in the new poll.

On the Democratic side, there was a slight uptick in respondents preferring a "different candidate" to Obama in 2012. Back in March, 20 percent said they would like a new nominee, while now 23 percent favor a candidate change. The White House has recently been engaged in a public war of words with the "professional left," but even his liberal critics doubt a candidate will step forward to launch a primary challenge to Obama.

New numbers in the race for Senate in Nevada show that one of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's (D) primary arguments — the notion that his standing in Washington benefits Nevada — closely divides voters.

While 51 percent said Reid's clout in Washington isn't important enough to keep him in office, 45 percent said the state can't afford to lose his influence, according to a new Mason-Dixon poll conducted for the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Reid's campaign has used a series of spots to hammer home that argument, aided by the slogan "No one can do more."

Overall, the poll gives Reid 46 percent of the vote to Republican Sharron Angle's 44. Just 5 percent of voters said they are undecided, while 2 percent wanted another candidate and another 3 percent selected "none of these."

It marks a slight increase in support for both candidates from a Mason-Dixon poll two weeks ago, which had Reid leading 43-42.

Still, both candidates have high negatives and Reid is simply unable to shake Angle, who despite being hit relentlessly as "too extreme" by state and national Democrats is keeping the race tight.

More from the LVRJ:

Pollster Brad Coker said the clout question could be key to the outcome of the tight race as the four-term senator and his backers contend Nevada can't afford to lose Reid's power, an argument that may win some support even from those who don't like the unpopular incumbent in an anti-incumbent election year.

A majority of voters say they are willing to sacrifice the Senate majority leader's power. But, for now, fewer seem ready to try a freshman senator who has vowed to block the Democratic Party agenda and who argues Reid hasn't done enough to revive Nevada's worst-in-the-nation economy and record high jobless and home foreclosure rates.

"More people are saying we don't need him there" in Washington, Coker said, adding it tracks with Reid's high negatives. "That's the kind of number that may foreshadow what the vote might look like when we get to the end. I think this race is more a referendum on Harry Reid than about Sharron Angle."

The clout question breaks down largely by party lines with 76 percent of Democrats saying Nevada needs to return Reid to the Senate and 83 percent of Republicans saying his power isn't worth it. Among swing nonpartisan voters, 54 percent said Reid's position isn't too valuable and 43 percent disagree.

New numbers show an electoral landscape that mirrors that of 1994 when Republicans took back control of Congress.

Pat Toomey has maintained a modest six-point lead over Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.) in the Pennsylvania Senate race, according to a new Rasmussen poll.

Toomey garnered support from 45 percent of likely voters, compared to 39 percent for Sestak. That's more or less unchanged from Rasmussen's poll two weeks ago.

More from Rasmussen:

Sixty-six percent (66%) of Pennsylvania voters regard Toomey as politically conservative, and 42% place his views in the mainstream. Twenty-seven percent (27%) see him as an extremist, with 31% undecided.

Forty-five percent (45%) feel that Sestak is politically liberal, while 27% characterize him as a moderate. But 39% regard his views an extreme, while nearly as many (37%) think his views are in the mainstream. But roughly one-in-four voters (23%) aren’t sure.

Sixty-eight percent (68%) of conservative voters in the state support Toomey, while 86% of liberals favor Sestak. Moderates are closely divided between the two candidates.

Twenty percent (20%) of Pennsylvania voters hold a Very Favorable opinion of Toomey, while 12% view him Very Unfavorably.

Sestak is viewed Very Favorably by 19% and Very Unfavorably by 18%.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D) finds himself in a virtual tie on Friday with GOP candidate Sharron Angle in Nevada's Senate race.

Reid led Angle by one point, according to a Las Vegas Review-Journal poll released this morning, well within the margin of error.

Forty-three percent of Nevada voters said they'd opt to reelect Reid if the election were held today, while 42 percent said they'd vote for Angle, a former state assemblywoman. Two percent said they'd choose someone else, 7 percent said they liked neither candidate, and 6 percent were undecided.

Reid has made up ground against Angle, a favorite of conservative Tea Party activists, since earlier this year, when polls showed him trailing a number of potential GOP foes, and showed an upside-down approval rating.

But the poll on Friday, conducted by Mason-Dixon Polling and Research, also showed Reid's margin over Angle tick downward from a high earlier this month.

A survey by the same organization conducted July 12-14 showed Reid at 44 percent and Angle at 37 percent.

The race is sure to only become more hotly contested in the weeks to come, as Reid returns from Washington to spend the August recess in Nevada, where he's expected to campaign heavily.

Republicans have had high hopes for the race in Nevada, where a rough economic situation and high jobless numbers plague a number of incumbent Democrats. If they were to knock off Reid, it would be a repeat of history in 2004, when John Thune (R) knocked off Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle in the South Dakota Senate Race.

The LVRJ poll released Friday has a 4 percent margin of error.

More states are set to be politically competitive in 2010 as fewer voters are identifying as Democrats.

New numbers from Gallup show 10 fewer states are considered “solid Democratic” this year compared to 2009, while an additional three states are now considered “solid Republican.”

The most politically competitive states in 2010, according to Gallup: Colorado, Mississippi, Missouri and Virginia. Each has a party ID gap of less than a single point.  

“The key finding at this juncture is that Democrats, not Republicans, have been the net losers as Americans shift away from the major parties,” wrote Gallup’s Frank Newport. “The overall result is a more competitive partisan environment this year than has been the case in the last two years, underscoring the potential for Republicans to do well and pick up seats in this year’s midterm elections.”

One caveat from Gallup — the state classifications are based on the political affiliations of “all residents,” not registered voters in a state. 

The results are based on interviews of more than 175,000 adults taken as part of Gallup’s daily tracking between January and June of this year.  

Nationwide, Democrats hold a 4-point party ID edge over Republicans this year — 44 percent to 40 percent. That’s down from the 8-point advantage the party held in 2009 and the 12-point edge it had in 2008.

Former President Clinton is more popular than either of his successors, according to a new Gallup poll.

Republicans have a five-point lead over Democrats in a generic congressional ballot, the latest Quinnipiac poll shows.

A new Quinnipiac University poll finds President Obama’s approval rating at the lowest point of his presidency. The poll found 44 percent of voters approve of the job Obama is doing, while 48 percent disapprove.

Among independents the gap is even wider — 52 percent disapprove to just 38 percent who approve of Obama’s performance.

A Q-poll in May found 48 percent of voters approving of the president, while 43 disapproved. Voters disapprove of the president’s handling of almost every major issue polled, from the economy to the Gulf oil spill to illegal immigration. Voters disapprove of Obama’s handling of the economy 56 percent to 39 percent. On illegal immigration, voters disapprove by a margin of 58-30 percent.

Against an unnamed Republican candidate for president in 2012, Obama is behind 39 percent to 36 percent, with 13 percent of respondents saying it would depend on who the GOP candidate is. 

“In politics a month is a lifetime, and we have 28 months until November of 2012. But politicians with reelect numbers at 40 percent bear watching,” said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. 

One piece of good news for the president out of these latest numbers — by a margin of 42 percent to 32 percent, voters said Obama has been a better president than George W. Bush.