2012

Poll: Obama Would Beat Romney

Negative primary takes a toll.

Mitt Romney may have won Nevada, but the brutal primary campaign appears to be taking a toll on his national support. A poll by The Washington Post and ABC News finds the Republican frontrunner clearly losing to President Obama for the first time. Obama's approval rating came in at 50 percent—the highest since the killing of Osama bin Laden—and he is beating Romney 52 percent to 43 percent in a general-election matchup. Voters said they disapprove of things the GOP primary candidates have said during the race, and by more than 2 to 1, voters said that the more they learned about Romney, the less they like him. As Romney suffers from the primary fight, Obama is benefiting from increasingly good jobs numbers. Even worse for Romney, the poll found that the two are evenly matched in voters' minds when it comes to job creation.