Obama Still Leads All Republican Candidates

There has been a lot of talk in the last few days about Obama's slipping popularity, and it's true that many people are not happy with how he's handling the economy (and many of those are liberals). Some are even saying now that the president would probably lose to a Republican candidate in the next election. Two polls (Rasmussen, Gallup) show President Obama would lose to some mythical unnamed GOP candidate. But two others (Pew, NBC/Wall Street Journal) show the president would win that same contest against an unknown Republican.

This is a silly thing to poll about -- matching a known candidate with a record against an unknown candidate with whatever mythical record a person wants to attach. It's worse than meaningless, it's downright make-believe. While these make-believe polls may make some Republicans feel better, looking at real match-ups with real candidates should bring them back down to earth. That's because the president still has no trouble beating any of the real Republican candidates.

Real Clear Politics does not poll itself, but instead takes the results of the most recent top political polls and averages them together. By doing this, they have in the past, come up with some remarkably accurate numbers. The polls they use are:

Fox News
ABC News/Washington Post
NBC News/ Wall Street Journal
Public Policy Polling
Rasmussen Reports
Quinnipiac
McClatchy/Marist
Democracy Corps
Reuters/Ipsos
Gallup
CNN/Opinion Research

The average of these polls shows the president still leads all the Republicans. Romney comes the closest to the president, but none of them beat him. Here is how the president stacks up against real GOP candidates:

President Obama...............46.9%
Mitt Romney...............42.6%
4.3% lead

President Obama...............50%
Michele Bachmann...............37.6%
12.4% lead

President Obama...............49.3%
Rick Perry...............37.7%
11.6% lead

President Obama...............49%
Tim Pawlenty...............36.7%
12.3% lead

President Obama...............55%
Sarah Palin...............35%
20% lead

President Obama...............49.7%
Herman Cain...............35%
14.7% lead

President Obama...............52.5%
Newt Gingrich...............37.8%
14.7% lead

President Obama...............49.8%
Ron Paul...............40%
9.8% lead

President Obama...............50%
Jon Huntsman...............36%
14% lead

Rick Santorum was not included in this look at the candidates, but I doubt he would have done as good as the other candidates listed. Santorum's campaign might as well be a stealth campaign, because no one's paying any attention to him at all.

Some Republicans might take heart at Romney being less than five points behind the president (while no one else is even close), but so far Romney has not shown he can win the nomination. His only hope is that the teabagger vote is split between several other candidates, and even then he'd better get to the convention with a majority of delegates (because it is highly doubtful he could win in a convention dominated by teabaggers).

Frankly, the president is looking pretty good. His only real problem right now is how many progressives are going to desert him over his right-wing economic policies. Note that he doesn't get over 50% in any of the match-ups. I think this is due to the desertion of progressives (who voted for him in 2008). He might still win with a plurality even without those progressive votes, but it sure wouldn't hurt him to rebuild some of those bridges.