According to the most recent Gallup Poll, registered voters by a “significant margin” now say they are more likely to vote for the “Republican Party’s candidate for president” than for President Obama in the 2012 election. The margin is eight points — 47 percent v. 39 percent. And among the all-important Independents, Obama’s gap is double digits (44 percent v. 34 percent).
In Gallup’s understated conclusion, “President Obama’s re-election prospects do not look very favorable at this point — if the election were held today, as measured by the generic presidential ballot.”
That’s quite right. It’s highly unusual for an incumbent president to be trailing by this large a margin in the summer of his third year. And it’s not good for his re-election prospects to be drawing support from less than 40 percent of the public.
None of this is surprising. Our sickly economy continues to exert a downward pull on this president, just as it would on any president. Obama is not exempt from the rules that apply to everyone else.
