Battleground state polls paint dismal picture for Obama re-election

Obama’s national poll results have not been stellar. According to Gallup, his job approval rate is currently around 46 percent, and in an election against a generic Republican candidate, Obama loses by 8 percentage points. However, according to one columnist, it’s Obama’s poll numbers in battleground states that should be keeping the incumbent up at night.

“The race for president isn’t a national contest. It’s a state-by-state battle to cobble an electoral vote majority. So while the national polls are useful in gauging the president’s popularity, the more instructive numbers are those from the battlegrounds,” Josh Kraushaar wrote for National Journal.

Kraushaar points out an Ohio poll from Quinnipiac University, pointing out that the poll found that 50 percent of Ohio voters disapprove of Obama’s job performance. According to the poll, the President is currently leading Republican candidates in the State, but not by much.

“His middling job and re-election ratings show that there may be a potential opportunity to defeat President Obama in 2012 in Ohio, but for that to occur the GOP will have to nominate a candidate that can capture the public’s imagination to a degree not yet evident,” said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

According to Kraushaar, the President’s prospects don’t improve in other battleground states, citing polls in Michigan, Iowa and New Hampshire where Obama is trailing Republican contenders.

“If Obama is struggling in the Democratic-friendly confines of Michigan and Pennsylvania (as recent polls have indicated), it’s hard to see him over-performing again in more-traditional battlegrounds such as Colorado, Nevada, and Virginia,” the column read. “Unless the environment changes significantly, all the money in the president’s reelection coffers won’t be able to expand the map; it can only defend territory that’s being lost.”