Politics
Election 2012: Obama leads Romney 50-42
Obama’s biggest advantages are among women and minorities. His biggest problem is with whites who lack college degrees.
Female voters favor the president by 54 per cent to 39 per cent. Men are evenly split, with 46 per cent for each candidate. That’s largely in line with the 2008 “gender gap” that helped Obama win the White House.
Romney draws the backing of half of all white voters, while Obama gets 43 per cent. White voters with college degrees split 50 per cent for Obama to 46 per cent for Romney. Whites without college degrees break 53 per cent for Romney to 38 per cent for Obama.
The president continues to draw strong support from black voters; 90 per cent favor him; only 5 per cent back Romney.
Obama holds an edge among independent voters, an important but easily misunderstood group. Independents neither identify with nor lean toward the Democratic or Republican parties, but not all are swing voters. Some are strongly liberal or conservative, so they can be just as committed to a candidate as some partisans.
The AP-GfK poll found 42 per cent of independents backing Obama, 30 per cent backing Romney and about a quarter undecided. Fifty-five per cent said they remain persuadable.
The Associated Press-GfK Poll was conducted May 3-7, by GfK Roper Public Affairs and Corporate Communications. It involved landline and cell phone interviews with 1,004 adults nationwide and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.9 percentage points. The poll included interviews with 871 registered voters; results among that group have an error margin of plus or minus 4.2 points.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press
