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A new poll conducted by Wenzel Strategies showed that one out of five Republicans will most likely vote for Obama come November. This startling result points to the fact that none of the Republican candidates who have been traveling the primary circuit in recent days have managed to pull together and solidify in any significant way the party base, leaving Republicans vulnerable to defection to voting for the incumbent Democratic president.
“The improvement in Obama’s prospects compared to the four remaining Republican challengers stems largely from two factors,” suggests pollster Fritz Wenzel. “First, Obama has largely avoided the political limelight while the GOP candidates savage each other with increasing intensity. Second, a smattering of evidence indicates that the economy is getting a little better, which helps the White House in the eyes of the voters. Secondly, the bloody fight for the Republican presidential nomination – by most estimations the nastiest GOP fight in memory – has really hurt the images of the challengers in the eyes of both Republicans and, especially, independent voters. For Republicans, each candidate carries with them now some taint that cannot be ignored.”
Adding insult to injury, voters who are unaffiliated with a party are being pushed away by what they see as the tastelessness of the GOP fight going on now during the primaries, and will also most likely endorse Obama when the election comes. Last fall polls showed that independents were leaning towards a Republican candidate by a 2 to 1 spread. Today they are more or less split evenly between the two parties, or even favoring the Democratic candidate, that is Obama, slightly.
“What must be particularly alarming to every Republican campaign regarding this nasty fight is that, even among those who say they think the nation is heading in the wrong direction, Obama still wins at least 20 percent support in head-to-head match-ups against the four remaining Republicans, and among those who said they were unsure about the overall direction of the nation, Obama wins by overwhelming percentages,” observes Wenzel.
