US-2012 President: 47% Obama (D), 44% Romney (R) (Newsweek/Daily Beast 6/28)

Douglas Schoen for Newsweek/Daily Beast
6/28/12; 600 likely voters; 4% margin of error
Mode: Live telephone interviews
Daily Beast Release

National

2012 President
47% Obama (D), 44% Romney (R) (chart)

Obama Job Approval
45% Approve, 54% Disapprove (chart)
Economy: 47/ 49 (chart)
Foreign Policy: 48 / 47 (chart)
Health Care: 37 / 58 (chart)

Favorable / Unfavorable
Barack Obama: 51 / 47 (chart)
Mitt Romney: 49 / 49 (chart)

Right Direction / Wrong Track
26% Right Direction, 59% Wrong Track (chart)

2012 Congress
38% Republicans, 36% Democrats (chart)

Also on HuffPost:

Comments

[Alan Snipes]

01:16 PM on 07/02/2012

It is not only about the President's approval rate at the time of the election, but more importantly is what his approval and favorability ratings are COMPARED to his opponent.

[Rightbrainedleftwinged]

12:00 PM on 07/02/2012

Reagan's approval a year before re-election was 38 percent, and he got 49 states.

[Field Marshall]

11:56 AM on 07/02/2012

Dennis,

Do you have any research on job approval on election day and percent of the popular vote garnered? I heard on CNN (and it was at the gym so it was hard to hear) that the job approval of the president on election day correlates significantly with the percent of the popular vote that they get in an adjusted two man race- within 2 percentage points.

If Obama is at 45% come November, what are the statistical chances of him getting more than 50% in a historical perspective?

[dpearl]

01:48 PM on 07/02/2012

I have posted my feelings on this issue in the past. Obviously Presidents would rather have a high approval rating than a low one and people describe the kind of relationship between approval and election results that you mention all the time. However, I don't think that's a very relevant question. For predicting election results, it is more important to see if the approval ratings ADD ANYTHING to the information we already get from just looking at the election match-up polls directly. Do presidents with high approval ratings tend to outperform the match-up polls? My sense is no. I don't find any extra information in the approval ratings. However, Alan Snipes raises an interesting point that I haven't looked at in the past. Does the differential between presidential approval and opposing candidate favorability have any predictive value above and beyond what we already know from the matchup polls? I will have to check that out.

[StatsNo1fan]

02:19 PM on 07/02/2012

The issue has been analyzed to death, and while the data is limited (too few incumbents had a close approve/disapprove rating in the polling era), the brightest political minds today (Cook, Rothenburg, Sabato, Silver, Brownstein and many more) all agree that an incumbent is in trouble with approval under 50, and virtually unelectaible under 46-47.

It's also common sensible. Who votes for someone whose job performance they do not approve of? Unless the other guy seems completely horrendous, you try the other guy.

[AaronTX]

02:20 PM on 07/02/2012

Don't have actual numbers but I would say yes. Ie: 1956 Eisenhower not extremely popular but Adlai Stevenson less. 1964, LBJ not all that likeable, but Barry Goldwater VERY MUCH less. 1972 - Nixon not very likeable but George McGovern less. The opponent is important.