CNN Poll: Gender gap and likeability keep Obama over Romney

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Source: CNN

(CNN) - President Barack Obama holds a nine-point lead over Republican challenger Mitt Romney thanks in part to the perception that the president is more likeable and more in touch with the problems facing women and middle class Americans, according to a new national poll.

A CNN/ORC International poll released Monday also indicates a large gender gap that benefits Obama, but the public is divided on which candidate can best jump-start the economy.

According to the poll, 52% of registered voters say if the presidential election were held today, they would vote for the president, with 43% saying they would cast a ballot for Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who is making his second bid for the White House. The poll was conducted Friday through Sunday, a few days after former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania suspended his bid for the GOP nomination. Even though former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Rep. Ron Paul of Texas continue their long-shot bids for the nomination, Romney is now generally considered the presumptive nominee.

The survey indicates women voters back Obama over Romney by 16 points (55%-39%), virtually unchanged from an 18-point advantage among women for the president in CNN polling last month.

Will be interesting too see if this continues now that the most offensive candidate Rick Santorum is out of the race.

Obama has been a rather shrewd campaigner so far by galvanizing female and black voters. The whole birth control insurance thing was done specifically the election in mind and they used to Trayvon Martin tragedy to their advantage as well.

I'm thinking that Mitt Romney will win. White suburban voters easily identify with the wife who drives two cadillacs, the mansions, the horses, the dressage, the elevator for his cars. Plus the Michigan trees being just the right height.

What chance does Obama have, really? It will be like trying to campaign against a Kardashian. Romney just has too much class and charisma.

Now, how did he win the Republican nomination again?

Conversely, more male voters support Romney than Obama. But likability, that will be a problem. Romney is not very good at connecting with people emotionally, which he will need to learn how to do.

Obama certainly has a huge advantage over Romney, and will likely win.

Romney has secured the GOP nominee largely through attrition, basically being able to outspend opponents 5 to 1 on ads. In the general election, Obama will likely have more than four times as much funding as Romney. So Obama will outspend Romney on negative attack ads.

Basically: Romney is too rich and doesn't care about the poor. Romney is a hypocrite for supporting socialized health care but opposing Obamacare. Romney is a flipflopper. Romney is going to be a continuation of George Bush. He will have to fight those 4 accusations.

Obama is a great speaker, whereas Romney has the charisma of a ken doll. The question is whether or not Romney can appeal to women now that he's got the nomination down and can step back from some of the anti-woman policies that were on the table when Santorum was still running. Of course, Obama just went "Go ahead and f**k ladies, the pill is on me" which is going to appeal to women, whereas Romney is viewed as anti-women due to not being pro-choice, pro-free birth control and so on. The free birth control makes sense if it reduces poorly planned pregnancies and thus creating more members in the most expensive group in the US, namely single-mothers.

I've always thought Obama was a really overrated speaker. He can read words on a teleprompter without sounding stupid like our previous president and isn't completely insufferable like Al Gore or John Kerry so he seems great in comparison but he isn't on the same level as Ronald Reagan or even Bill Clinton when is comes to public speaking. The guy is all ummmms and ahhhhhs when unprepared and is surprisingly gaffe prone. He comes off as a little wooden, long winded, and kind of a dork as a opposed to charming and reassuring like Reagan or Clinton. Luckily for Obama, Romney is about as wooden and inauthentic as humanly possible when speaking prepared or unprepared.

For the rest of the world, which includes me, American foreign policy is the only thing I really care about. Obama has turned out a large disappointment in that field, as he quietly assisted Libya's new genocidal regime and refused to close Guantánamo Bay unless we, as a people distrustful of US war efforts and largely against invading random countries for oil with ambiguous political scapegoats that are relatively easy to defeat, offered to take in the prisoners the US didn't want to handle.

If Romney wants to withdraw from Afghanistan and stop propping up disgusting regimes, then I prefer Romney regardless of his local plans.