The generalized narrative of the presidential election contest so far this cycle is that not much has changed...which is true in the broad sense....but we are seeing a little movement toward the Obama side of the ledger.
In the four, separate, non-overlapping three-week periods since Gallup began tracking on April 11, Barack Obama's percentage of the vote has been 46-47%.... Mitt Romney's has been 45%-46%....each of these three-week periods is based on about 9,000 interviews with registered voters.
Still, the most recent three-week period shows Obama at his upper range, 47%, while Romney is at his lower range, 45%...these results suggest that within the broad framework of broad stability, Obama has gained a slight edge...also evident in our short-term seven-day rolling average, where, as of the July 12 report, Obama has a 47% to 44% lead over Romney.
These are data from registered voters....Romney most likely will get some benefit from turnout, as the Republican candidate nearly always does...meaning that Obama needs a cushion within the registered voter totals to have a high probability of breaking even or winning the popular vote on Nov. 6.
The structure of the support for each candidate remains basically static....Obama's highest support comes from any registered voter who identifies him or herself as something other than white....along with those groups of voters who are divorced from what we might call the traditional structures of marriage and religion...and young voters and voters with postgraduate educations…and low-income voters….and women.
Romney's base of support is whites -- along with those who are religious, married, middle aged, who don't have a postgraduate degree, and who are at a middle-income level or higher.
Plus, my colleague Jeff Jones' analysis shows that Romney wins in the South, Obama in the East, and the two are very close in the Midwest and West…all of these data and much more are now available in Gallup's amazing new U.S. Presidential Election Center.
The dynamics of each campaign's strategic efforts are becoming clear...Obama's team is taking a page from the playbooks of previous incumbents and attempting to paint Romney as an unacceptable alternative to four more years of Obama....which is basically built off the assumption that an incumbent election is all about a choice between what you know and what you don't know. Obama's relatively weak position, based on his sub-50% job approval ratings, means he can't afford to sit back ala Ronald Reagan and talk about the new "Morning in America" under his regime....so the strategy is to focus on the assumption that whatever the current situation….the alternative is worse.
The main target of the Obama campaign is Romney's wealth, how he acquired it, and where he has invested it. New Gallup data show that most Americans don't care about Romney's wealth…75% say it makes no difference to their vote...but 19% of independent voters say it makes them less likely to vote for Romney, which could be a factor.
This whole push has been given an accelerant with the Obama team's re-emphasis on a call for higher-income families to pay more in taxes....this idea is poll-tested and does well…when Gallup last asked about it, 59% supported the idea of higher taxes on those making $250,000 or more.
Still, Americans like having a rich class and want to be rich themselves, and reducing the income gap is a low priority for Americans…but the Obama team's idea is to raise doubts that Romney's policies would help the average American....The latest ABC/Washington Post poll, however, shows that Romney does slightly better than Obama in terms of Americans' views of who would do the better job handling the economy.
Romney has three time periods in which to fill in the blanks on his image...and to counter the Obama campaign's efforts to define his image for him...his VP pick, the convention, and the debates. There is some thought that Romney may spring his VP pick before the Olympics get underway on July 27...but the historical precedent would be for him to announce just before the Aug. 27 beginning of the Republican convention.
Romney's campaign team made the decision to have their candidate speak to the the NAACP convention in Houston on Wednesday...by no means the world's friendliest audience for a Republican candidate...at the moment, black voters are going for Obama over Romney by 87% to 5%. It is highly unlikely that Romney will make any significant headway into this monolithically Obama-supporting voting group...the assumption is that Romney's team made the decision that his appearance might serve to soften his image among other key voting groups.
No sign yet of major shifts in any of our key Gallup tracking indicators after last Friday's announcement of the June jobs report...economic confidence is beginning to slide a little, however. We will see if that continues with our weekly report due out next Tuesday at Gallup.com.