From USA Today’s Swing States Poll: A shift by women puts Obama in lead:
In the fifth Swing States survey taken since last fall, Obama leads Republican front-runner Mitt Romney 51%-42% among registered voters just a month after the president had trailed him by two percentage points.
The biggest change came among women under 50. In mid-February, just under half of those voters supported Obama. Now more than six in 10 do while Romney’s support among them has dropped by 14 points, to 30%. The president leads him 2-1 in this group.
Romney has a big lead among older men, but it’s not even close to offsetting his deficit with other demographic groups. Romney does a little worse with women in the 12 swing states than Santorum does, but Romney does a little better in the matchup with Obama than Santorum does.
There’s not really any good news for Romney in this latest poll, but there could be some mitigating factors:
- the election is still 8 months away
- the margin for error in the poll was 4 points
- as the primaries wind down, Romney can move away from issues that might be costing the votes of women
- as the primaries wind down, Romney can embrace issues that concern women
From USA Today
- the poll of swing states does not include Indiana and assumes it will be a red state in 2012, even though Obama won it in 2008
- the poll assumes Missouri, which McCain won very narrowly, is not a swing state and will be red this fall
- given recent polling and ongoing demographic trends, a few of the so-called swing states — including ones like Pennsylvania and Michigan — could be easy Obama wins in the fall