{"id":34548,"date":"2011-12-18T21:24:44","date_gmt":"2011-12-19T04:24:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=34548"},"modified":"2012-07-09T06:42:57","modified_gmt":"2012-07-09T12:42:57","slug":"obama-looks-safe-in-nm-polling-company-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2011\/12\/obama-looks-safe-in-nm-polling-company-says\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama \u2018looks safe\u2019 in NM, polling company says"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

President Barack Obama, shown here campaigning in Las Cruces in 2008. (Photo by Heath Haussamen)<\/p><\/div>\n

After surveying New Mexico voters recently, a left-leaning polling company says President Barack Obama\u2019s<\/a> re-election chances in the state look good.<\/p>\n

Of course, we\u2019re talking about the group Public Policy Polling<\/a>, and I\u2019ve already written about<\/a> the controversy surrounding their work and this specific poll.<\/p>\n

At any rate, PPP\u2019s survey found the Democrat Obama leading all Republican candidates by wide margins. In two-person races, Ron Paul<\/a> came the closest to challenging Obama, with 51 percent saying they would vote for Obama, 38 percent saying they would vote for Paul, and 12 percent being undecided.<\/p>\n

However, add former N.M. Gov. Gary Johnson<\/a> into the mix as a libertarian \u2013 Johnson is considering abandoning his GOP bid<\/a> for president to do just that \u2013 and things get even worse for Republicans. With the three candidates being Obama, Johnson, and Republican Newt Gingrich<\/a>, for example, Obama won with 45 percent to Gingrich\u2019s 28 percent and Johnson\u2019s 20 percent. In a three-person race that included Republican Mitt Romney<\/a> instead of Gingrich, Obama won with 44 percent to Romney\u2019s 27 percent and Johnson\u2019s 23 percent.<\/p>\n

Still, the news isn\u2019t all good for Obama. From PPP:<\/p>\n

\u201cBarack Obama is considerably less popular in New Mexico now than he was in 2008. He won 57% of the vote there, but now has an approval rating under 50% in the state at 49\/46. Those represent the poorest numbers we\u2019ve found for him in New Mexico all year: in February he was at 55% approval and in June it was 50%. Obama is upside down with independents at 47\/52 and has a lower than normal 72% approval rating with Democrats.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

Then why is he doing so well? From PPP:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe good news for Obama though is that voters in the state aren\u2019t responding positively to any of the Republican hopefuls. Current front runner Newt Gingrich has a 28\/62 favorability rating and Mitt Romney\u2019s is 27\/58. The most \u2018popular\u2019 of the Republicans, such as it is, is Ron Paul at 27\/54.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The survey of 500 New Mexico voters between Dec. 10 and 12 has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.<\/p>\n

Read the poll memo here<\/a> and more about it from PPP here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After surveying New Mexico voters recently, a left-leaning polling company says President Barack Obama\u2019s re-election chances in the state look good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[156,297,240,226,116],"class_list":["post-34548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-2012-election","tag-gary-johnson","tag-polling","tag-presidential-race","tag-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34548\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}