Across every income bracket, education level, and partisan group Romney is overwhelmingly seen as the candidate that will do the most to benefit the rich. Interestingly, the group that most strongly believes Romney would do the most to advance the economic interests of wealthy Americans is the wealthiest Americans. An incredible 82 percent of people making over $100,000 a year think Romney would help them the most, compared to just 8 percent who think Obama would do more for them.

Being viewed as the candidate who would do the most to help the rich won’t necessarily be a problem for Romney if he were, in general, seen as the candidate best able to advance the economic interest of all Americans, including the rich; but that is not the case. The poll found that Americans narrowly think President Obama would do more to advance the economic interest of people like themselves. 46 percent think Obama would do more to help them and their families economically, while 43 percent think Romney would do more for them. The margin was slightly more favorable for Obama on the question of who would do more to economically help the middle class. On that question, 51 percent chose Obama and 42 percent chose Romney.

Romney is seen as a very rich man whose policies would financial benefit rich people like him but not the middle class. That is not a good image in a time of economic hardship and a big target for the Obama campaign to exploit.

Not surprisingly, the industry divide mirrors the large city vs country geographic divide in our politics. People employed in industries normally found in more rural places such as mining and farming vote Republican, while those employed in jobs found mostly in urban area such as service workers support Democrats.

The fact that Obama does so poorly with people in the “construction or mining workers” at least partly explains why he has done embarrassingly badly in Democratic primaries the Appalachian coal states. While Obama’s environmental record leaves much to be desired, it is not nearly as extraction industry friendly as the GOP’s “drill here drill now” position.

Since then though, President Obama has come out for marriage equality and his use of the bully pulpit has had a huge impact on Maryland voters, especially the state’s large African American population. From PPP:

-57% of Maryland voters say they’re likely to vote for the new marriage law this fall, compared to only 37% who are opposed. That 20 point margin of passage represents a 12 point shift from an identical PPP survey in early March, which found it ahead by a closer 52/44 margin.

-The movement over the last two months can be explained almost entirely by a major shift in opinion about same-sex marriage among black voters. Previously 56% said they would vote against the new law with only 39% planning to uphold it. Those numbers have now almost completely flipped, with 55% of African Americans planning to vote for the law and only 36% now opposed.

It will be interesting to see if the large shift in polling of opponents of same-sex marriage will continue/succeed in getting their referendum qualified for the ballot.

In a related development, the Maryland State Court of Appeals this week concluded that a petition signature is invalid unless it is an exact match between the name on the voter registration record and the name on the petition. This extremely rigid standard will make gathering the required number of valid signatures for a referendum to qualify very difficult. Combining this with recent developments makes it much more likely that same-sex marriages will begin as planned in Maryland at the beginning of next year.

St. Norbet College/Wisconsin Public Radio (5/17-22)
Scott Walker (R) 50%
Tom Barrett (D) 45%
Not sure 5%

Reason-Rupe poll by ORC International (5/14-18)
Scott Walker (R) 50%
Tom Barrett (D) 42%
Don’t Know 6%
Refused 3%

Although the race remains relatively tight, all the recent polling constantly shows Walker with a small single digit lead. While polling special elections is difficult because so much depends on what could end up being very unusual turnout, at this point Walker is a strong favorite to maintain his office.

The good news: Ohio and Virginia. In Ohio Incumbent Democrat Sherrod Brown holds a huge lead and is currently polling over 50 percent. That is about as good as one could hope a candidate running in a swing state.

Marist/NBC (5/17-20)
Sherrod Brown (D) 51%
Josh Mandel (R) 37%
Undecided 12%

In Virginia Democratic Tim Kaine seems to finally pull away from former Republican Senator George Allen. Up to this point most polls showed the race completely tied but this new poll has Kaine with a lead outside the margin of error

Marist/NBC (5/17-20)
Tim Kaine (D) 49%
George Allen (R) 43%
Undecided 9%

The neutral: Massachusetts. The Senate race in Massachusetts remains as tight as it has been all year. A new Suffolk poll again shows incumbent Republican Scott Brown and Democrat Elizabeth Warren effectively tied. This race basically tied for months.

Suffolk (5/20-22)
Scott Brown (R) 48%
Elizabeth Warren (D) 47%
Undecided 5%
Refused 1%

The bad: Florida. The one seriously worrying development for Democrats is new polling in Florida. Early in the year incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson held a large lead despite rather poor approval numbers. It now appears his Republican challenger Connie Mack has become better known, he has made serious gains on Nelson. A Marist poll has Nelson up by only four points and a Quinnipiac poll has Mack technically leading by one. This represents a huge improvement for Mack who was trailing Nelson by eight points just two month ago in the same Quinnipiac poll.

Marist/NBC (5/17-20)
Bill Nelson (D) 46%
Connie Mack (R) 42%
Undecided 12%

Quinnipiac (5/15-21)
Bill Nelson (D) 41%
Connie Mack (R) 42%
Someone else 1%
Wouldn’t vote 2%
DK/NA 14%

The battle for the Senate continues to be extremely tight. It is possible that control of the Senate will come down to just one or two seats.

The Washington Post/ABC news found only 42 percent approve of Obama’s handling of the economy, while 55 percent disapprove. The NBC/WSJ poll had nearly identical results with 43 percent approving of his handling of the economy and 52 percent disapproving. In addition the latter poll found that on a host of economic issues a plurality believes Obama has actually made things worse: 37 percent think Obama’s approach to the economic downturn made things worse compared to just 31 percent who think he made it better.  Similarly, 32 percent think he made the housing market worse and just 24 percent think he made it better. On gas prices it is 37 percent worse and just 11 percent better.

A President with poor marks on the economy, running for re-election during a bad economy and with the economy the number one issue should have some serious political problems.  Yet both recent polls show him with a small lead. The Post/ABC poll has Obama leading by three, and the NBC/WSJ poll has Obama up by four.

I can only assume that Obama continues to lead in large part because even though the American people  think Obama has done a poor job with the economy, they doubt Romney could do better. The ABC poll had Obama and Romney completely tied on the questions of who they think would do a better job with the economy and job creation. More telling, the NBC poll found 32 percent are “extremely” or “quite” confident Obama has the right policies to improve the economy, while just 19 percent feel that way about Romney. The country thinks Romney would either be no better or perhaps worse on the number one issue in this election.

The Romney campaign has tried to make his business prowess a main selling point, as proof that he could better handle the economy.  But so far that strategy appears to have failed. What is supposed to be Romney’s greatest strength is at best a wash. Romney doesn’t even need to be seen as being able to do a great job on the economy to win the issue. He just needs to be seen as able to do better than the poor job Obama has done, yet Romney hasn’t managed to clear that low bar.

As we get closer to the election this could change, but as it currently stands the Romney team has a lot of work to do on this issue. This election could easily turn into a referendum on Obama’s handling of the economy, but not if the alternative is seen as even less capable of handling the challenge.

The good news for the Obama campaign is that his supporters are significantly more enthusiastic. Half of the registered voters who plan to vote for Obama say they are “very enthusiastic” about supporting him. On the other hand, only a quarter of Romney supporters are “very enthusiastic” about casting their ballots for him.

The bad news for the Obama campaign is that the economy continues to be the number one issue for voters. On that issue Obama currently gets very poor marks. Only 42 percent of Americans approve of Obama’s handling of the economy, while 55 percent disapprove. Despite Obama having very bad numbers on the economy, however, Mitt Romney has failed to get real traction on the issue. Registered voters are perfectly split — 47 to 47 — on which candidate they trust to do a better job of handling the economy.

This is probably why you see the Obama campaign really attacking Romney on the issue of Bain Capital, trying to depict it as vulture capitalism. With the economy still in very poor shape, Obama probably can’t convince people that he did a great job with it.  But his campaign can at least try to stop voters from thinking Romney would be better on the issue. So far they seem to be succeeding on that front.

NET LEANED VOTE PREFERENCE – registered voters

                              Other    Neither    Would not      No
             Obama   Romney   (vol.)    (vol.)   vote (vol.)   opinion
5/20/12  RV   49       46        *         3          1           1
4/8/12   RV   51       44        *         2          3           1
3/10/12  RV   47       49        *         1          2           2
2/4/12   RV   51       45        *         1          1           1
1/15/12  RV   46       48        *         2          2           2
12/18/11 RV   47       47        *         2          2           1
11/3/11  RV   46       47        *         3          2           1
10/2/11  RV   46       48        *         2          1           2
9/1/11   RV   45       49        *         2          2           2
7/17/11  RV   49       47        *         2          1           1
6/5/11   RV   46       49        *         2          1           2
4/17/11  RV   49       45        *         3          1           1

President Obama has an advantage on the issue of health care cost and college affordability, but Mitt Romney has the advantage when it comes to the deficit and weak economic growth. Looking at all the numbers it is hard to say either candidate has any significant advantage on the overall concept of the economy, although the fact that Romney is seen as better at improving growth probably gives him an overall edge.

I think it is interesting that Obama has the advantage on health care and college cost. For both issues he passed a law on a party line basis. Even though the Affordable Care Act is very unpopular, it seems he gets some credit for at least accomplishing something.

On the other hand Obama spent almost a year unsuccessfully trying to get a bipartisan deficit compromise, and now it is the economy issue on which he performs the worst. It seems people care primarily about results and don’t reward trying to reach out to the other side.  That suggests that simply trying to stop Obama from getting any accomplishments has been the smart political move for Republicans.

800,000 signatures to qualify the initiative for the November ballot are being filed at 58 county registrar offices across the state today.  The initiative needs 504,000 valid signatures to qualify for the ballot, and it must be certified to qualify for the November ballot by June 28.  US Senator Dianne Feinstein is an honorary co-chair of the initiative campaign.

[...]

The ballot measure:

• Requires health insurance companies to publicly disclose and justify, under penalty of perjury, proposed rate changes before they take effect.
• Makes every document filed by an insurance company to justify a rate increase a public record.
• Requires public hearings on proposed rate increases.
• Gives Californians the right to challenge excessive and unfair premium rate 
increases.
• Prohibits health, auto and home insurers from considering Californians’ credit history or prior insurance coverage when setting premiums or deciding whether to offer coverage.
• Gives the elected insurance commissioner authority to reject unjustified rate increases.

The initiative is important because even though the new health care reform law will require all Americans to acquire health insurance, it didn’t give the government the power to prevent price gouging or stop unreasonable rate increases.

The non-enforceable rating review provision that is in the Affordable Care Act has proven to be a total failure. While the federal law gives the HHS the power to simply declare that a rate increase is “unreasonable,” it wasn’t given the power to stop the rate increase from being implemented. The idea the government only needs to shame the insurance companies into doing the right thing has so far proven to be as idiotic and worthless as it sounds.

With so much money at stake expect this to be an heated battle with huge spending on the part of the health insurance industry.

1. Greensboro-High Point (Obama/1300, AFF/560, Romney/480, Crossroads/320, ROF/280)
2. Roanoke-Lynchburg (Obama/1600, AFF/400, Romney/311, Crossroads/270, ROF/265)
3. Norfolk-Portsmouth (Obama/1300, AFF/430, Romney/380, Crossroads/240, Priorities USA/200, ROF/165)
4. Colorado Springs (Obama/1250, AFF/475, Priorities USA/350, Crossroads/245, ROF/225)
5. Greenville-Spartanburg-Ashville (AFF/845, Obama/815, Crossroads/525, ROF/350)
6. Raleigh-Durham (Obama/1,000, Romney/485, Crossroads/340, AFF/325, ROF/275)
7. Des Moines (Obama/1,500, Romney/330, AFF/300, ROF/150)
8. Richmond-Petersburg (Obama/1,000, Romney/370, Priorities USA/265, AFF/225, Crossroads/145, ROF/140)
9. Cedar Rapids (Obama/1,200, Romney/350, AFF/250, , Crossroads/165, ROF/165)
10. Toledo (Obama/1,400, AFF/350, Crossroads/185, ROF/170)

The big states are North Carolina, Virginia, Colorado, Iowa and Ohio in that order. At this point it seems both sides are banking on the fact demographic changes have created two new Southern swing states, Virginia and North Carolina. Together the two states hold about as many electoral votes as traditionally dominant swing state Florida. Virginia has 13, North Carolina has 15 and Florida has 29.

If Obama can win those two states and take a large share of the South’s electoral votes, it is very hard to picture a legitimate path for Romney to get to the necessary 270 electoral college votes.