DATE: Sept. 18, 2012FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, CONTACT:David Stawasz at 413-796-2026 (office) or 413-214-8001 (cell)OBAMA MAINTAINS STRONG LEAD OVER ROMNEY
Addition of Paul Ryan to the GOP ticket hurts more than it helps in the Bay State
SPRINGFIELD, MA…
President Barack Obama continues to hold a sizable lead overformer Governor Mitt Romney in Massachusetts in the race for the White House,according to the latest survey from the Western New England University PollingInstitute.The statewide telephone survey of 444 likely voters, which the Polling Instituteconducted Sept. 6-13, 2012 in partnership with The Republican newspaper of Springfield,MA and MassLive.com, found Obama ahead of Romney by a margin of 60 percent to 38percent.Among a larger sample of 545 registered voters, Obama led Romney by a two-to-one
margin, 64 percent to 32 percent. The Polling Institute’s previous survey in the race,
conducted May 29-31, 2012, found Obama with a 22-point lead among all registeredvoters, with 56 percent supporting the president to 34 percent for Romney.
“As he has in other parts of the country, President Obama may be experiencing a post
-
convention bounce in Massachusetts,” said T
im Vercellotti, director of the Polling
Institute and a political science professor at Western New England University. “Voter
enthusiasm shows up not only in the presidential horse-race numbers, but also in his
measures of job approval and favorability.”
Sixty percent of registered voters said they approve of the job Obama is doing aspresident, while 32 percent said they disapprove, compared to approval-disapprovalnumbers of 54 percent and 36 percent respectively among registered voters in the May29-31,
2012 survey. Obama’s favorability also is up seven points, to 64 percent, among
all registered voters, and his unfavorability rating is down four points since the Maysurvey.Romney, however, has seen his favorability rating decline since the last survey. Thirty-one percent of registered voters view him favorably, down from 36 percent in May, and60 percent of registered voters view him unfavorably, up from 50 percent in the previoussurvey. Among the smaller sample of likely voters, 34 percent view Romney favorably,and 56 percent view him unfavorably.In terms of the vice-presidential spot on the national tickets, Massachusetts voters alsowere more favorable toward the Democratic nominee than the Republican nominee.Fifty-one percent of likely voters had a favorable view of Vice President Joe Biden, and
235 percent had an unfavorable view. Twenty-nine percent of likely voters had a favorableview of Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin congressman whom Romney has chosen as his runningmate. Forty-seven percent of likely voters had an unfavorable view of Ryan, while 21percent either had not heard of Ryan or had no opinion of him.In the presidential match-up, Obama had support from 97 percent of likely voters whoidentified themselves as Democrats, while 91 percent of Republican likely voters saidthey support Romney. The candidates split the independent vote, with 47 percent backingObama and 48 percent backing Romney. But the three to one registration edge thatDemocrats have over Republicans in Massachusetts means that Republican candidateshave to win significant numbers of independent voters in order to be competitive in thestate.Obama led Romney among all other demographic groups. Male likely voters supportedhim by a margin of 53 percent to 43 percent, and women backed Obama over Romney bya two to one margin, 66 percent to 32 percent. Support for Obama also increased by agecategory, with likely voters ages 65 and older supporting him over Romney 66 percent to31 percent.
Romney’s selection of Ryan as his running mate appeared to hurt the Republican ticket
more than help it overall in Massachusetts. Sixteen percent of likely voters said thechoice of Ryan as vice-presidential nominee made them more likely to vote for Romney,but 27 percent of likely voters said the pick made them less likely to back the formerMassachusetts governor. Fifty-five percent said the choice made no difference to them.
Selecting Ryan did boost Romney’s support among Republican likely voters,
with 27percent saying the choice made them more likely to back Romney, 8 percent saying lesslikely, and 62 percent saying the decision made no difference. More than half of independent likely voters said the choice made no difference, with 21 percent saying thepick made them more likely to vote for Romney and 21 percent saying the choice madethem less likely to support the Republican nominee.While the polling results for the presidential race offered little drama, the votingpreferences of Obama and R
omney supporters in the state’s much
-watched U.S. Senaterace provided some intrigue.The survey of 444 likely voters found Democrat Elizabeth Warren leading Republicanincumbent Scott Brown 50 percent to 44 percent in the race for the Senate. Polling data,however, showed that some likely voters who back Obama indicated they would splittheir ballots and support Brown for the Senate race if the election was held today.Among Obama supporters, 77 percent said they would vote for Warren and 14 percentsaid they would back Brown. The percentages were roughly the same among allregistered voters, and were comparable to results from the previous survey conductedMay 29-31, 2012.
3
“While Warren leads Brown in this survey, the defection of
14 percent of Obamasu
pporters to Brown should be of concern to her,” Vercellotti said. “For Brown, wi
nningover as many Obama supporters as possible is clearly a critical part of winning re-election
.”
METHODOLOGY
The Western New England University Polling Institute survey consists of telephoneinterviews with 588 adults ages 18 and older drawn from across Massachusetts usingrandom-digit-dialing Sept. 6-13, 2012. The sample yielded 545 adults who said they areregistered to vote in Massachusetts, and 444 adults who are classified as likely to vote inthe Nov. 6, 2012 general election. Unless otherwise noted, the figures in this release arebased on the statewide sample of likely voters. The Polling Institute classified likely
voters based on voters’ responses to questions abou
t interest in the election, likelihood of voting in the election, ability to identify their polling place, and whether they reportedvoting in the 2008 presidential election.
The Polling Institute dialed household telephone numbers, known as “landline numbers,”
and cell phone numbers for the survey. In order to draw a representative sample from thelandline numbers, interviewers first asked for the youngest male age 18 or older who washome at the time of the call, and if no adult male was present, the youngest female age 18or older who was at home at the time of the call. Interviewers dialing cell phone numbersinterviewed the respondent who answered the cell phone after confirming three things:(1) that the respondent was in a safe setting to complete the survey; (2) that therespondent was an adult age 18 or older; and (3) that the respondent was a resident of Massachusetts. The landline and cell phone data were combined and weighted to reflectthe adult population of Massachusetts by gender, race, age, and county of residence usingU.S. Census estimates for Massachusetts. Complete results of the poll are availableonline at www.wne.edu/news.The full text of the questionnaire for this survey is
available at /www1.wne.edu/pollinginst.Complete coverage of the polls by our media
partners, The Republican and MassLive.com, can be found atwww.masslive.com/politics/ . All surveys are subject to sampling error, which is the expected probable differencebetween interviewing everyone in a population versus a scientific sampling drawn fromthat population. The sampling error for a sample of 444 likely voters is +/- 4.6 percent ata 95 percent confidence interval. Thus if 57 percent of likely voters approve of the jobthat Barack Obama is doing as president, one would be 95 percent sure that the truefigure would be between 52.4 percent and 61.6 percent (57 percent +/- 4.6 percent) hadall Massachusetts likely voters been interviewed, rather than just a sample. The margin of sampling error for the sample of 545 registered voters is +/- 4.2 percent at a 95 percentconfidence interval, and + / - 4 percent for the sample of 588 adults. Sampling errorincreases as the sample size decreases, so statements based on various populationsubgroups are subject to more error than are statements based on the total sample.Sampling error does not take into account other sources of variation inherent in publicopinion studies, such as non-response, question wording, or context effects.
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