New Poll Confirms Massive Re-Election Crisis For Obama

obama, july 2010

The midterms aren't even here yet, but already the story is quickly turning to 2012, and whether Obama can win re-election.

POLITICO has a new poll out indicating that it will be a tough battle, but before we get into that, you should think about a couple of things.

The first is that 2012 is ages from now. In 1994 it looked like a sure thing that Clinton would be doomed in 1996, but he won re-election handily.

That being said, it's impossible also to imagine Barack Obama, no matter what the economy is doing, inspiring the same type of near-religious fervor that brought his supporters to the polls en masse in 2008. That was a rare American political earthquake that enable him to produce a political machine that simply crushed John McCain. Even if his popularity recovers, that was a once-in-a-political-lifetime type of tailwind.

As for the 2012 numbers, they don't look good:

A significant majority of voters are considering voting against President Barack Obama in the 2012 election, expressing sour views of his new health care law and deep skepticism about his ability to create jobs and grow the sluggish economy, according to the latest POLITICO / George Washington University Battleground Poll.

Only 38 percent of respondents said Obama deserves to be reelected, even though a majority of voters hold a favorable view of him on a personal level. Forty-four percent said they will vote to oust him, and 13 percent said they will consider voting for someone else.

That being said, here's some good news. Voters prefer Obama to Palin:

As far as the 2012 race is concerned, Obama remains more popular than Sarah Palin, the most recognizable top Republican to voters. By an 8-point margin, voters would back Obama over Palin if the vote were today, and support for her is weak in the Midwest and the Northeast. But Palin’s problems run deeper: 58 percent said her actions since resigning as Alaska governor in 2009 have made them less likely to vote for her for president. She and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich were the only leading 2012 possibilities with net negative favorability ratings.