President Obama Does Well In New Poll

There is a new CNN/Opinion Research Poll out, and it's sort of a mixed blessing for Democrats. The poll was conducted by telephone between April 9th and 11th, and involved 1008 adults with a margin of error of 3 points (907 were registered voters and that group had a margin of error of 3.5 points).

The poll shows both Democrats and Republicans are pretty close in popularity. The Democrats had a favorability rating of 49% with an unfavorable rating of 46%. Republicans had a favorability rating of 47% and an unfavorable rating of 47%. That's virtually a dead heat between the two parties, since the numbers are within the margin of error.

When the respondents were asked whether they would vote for a Democrat or Republican for Congress, the numbers were similar. Registered voters gave Democrats a very slight edge (50% to 46%), as did all respondents (50% to 45%). When you consider the margin of error, that gives Democrats an edge of between .5% to 5%. That's close, and shows neither party has a big lead so far in the upcoming congressional elections.

It's still possible that something could happen to give one party or the other an edge in the upcoming elections, but if the numbers remain the same, incumbents will probably hold their seats and open seats will be closely contested. While Republicans could easily pick up a few seats (and the party out of power usually does in an off-year election), these numbers are going to have to improve a lot before Republicans can hope to regain either house of Congress.

Then the poll turned to presidential politics, and the Democrats look pretty good there. Or, at least President Obama does. He received a favorability rating of 57%, with only Hillary Clinton scoring higher at 61%. The favorability ratings were much worse for possible Republican candidates -- Mike Huckabee - 43%, Mitt Romney - 40%, Sarah Palin - 39% and Newt Gingrich 38%. These are not good numbers for Republicans.

Then the poll asked respondents what Republican they would choose if the election were held today. The results showed there is no clear favorite yet, since no candidate got even 25% of the vote. Here are the numbers:

Mike Huckabee...............24%

Mitt Romney...............20%

Sarah Palin...............15%

Newt Gingrich...............14%

Ron Paul...............8%

Rick Santorum...............3%

Tim Pawlenty...............2%

Mike Pence...............2%

Haley Barbour...............1%

There's still about two years to go and something could happen to give one of these candidates an edge, or a new candidate could emerge. But these numbers show that the Republican nomination is still wide open. Even so, none of these candidates would stand a chance against President Obama right now. Here are how the top four Republicans would fare against Obama (with registered voters):

Obama...............54%

Huckabee...............45%

Obama...............53%

Romney...............45%

Obama...............55%

Palin...............42%

Obama...............55%

Gingrich...............43%

It looks like the Republicans still have a lot of work to do to even have a chance of unseating President Obama in 2012. Another interesting statistic is the popularity of the teabaggers, who only got a 38% favorability rating.