(Reuters) – President Barack Obama goes into his Democratic National Convention getting high marks from voters on personal attributes but facing doubts about his handling of the U.S. economy, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found on Tuesday.
Overall, Republican presidential opponent Mitt Romney led Obama 46 percent to 45 percent among likely voters on who they said they supported at this stage of the campaign, with nine weeks to go until the November 6 election.
The online poll showed that voters found Obama more likable than Romney by 50 percent to 30 percent. Forty-one percent said they believed Obama “understands people like me,” while 28 percent said that about Romney.
But on the overriding issue of the campaign, the strength of the U.S. economy, Obama has left Romney an opening, with 75 percent believing the economy is on the wrong track compared to 17 percent who think it is going in the right direction.
The overall poll result is little changed from Sunday’s poll when the two candidates were tied at 45 percent. Romney got only a short-lived, small bounce in the polls from the Republican National Convention in Tampa last week, and Obama now has the chance to gain a bounce of his own.
He is to address his party’s convention in Charlotte, North Carolina on Thursday night.
“With the launch of the Democratic convention today, I think we will see the numbers begin to shift in Obama’s direction soon,” said Ipsos pollster Julia Clark.
At this point there were indications that Republicans were more enthusiastic about voting for Romney than Democrats for Obama.
The poll found Romney got the support of 86 percent of Republicans, compared to 79 percent support for Obama from Democrats. Independent voters were basically tied, 36 percent for Romney to 35 percent for Obama.
Vice President Joe Biden, who speaks before Obama on Thursday, was viewed unfavorably by 51 percent compared to 49 percent who supported him.
The rolling poll measures sentiment during the two-week convention season by polling over the previous four days. Monday’s findings are from an Ipsos poll conducted for Reuters from August 31-Sept 4.
For the survey, 1,447 American registered voters were interviewed online. The precision of the Reuters/Ipsos online polls is measured using a credibility interval. In this case, the poll has a credibility interval of plus or minus 2.9 percentage points for all respondents.
(Editing By Alistair Bell and Alden Bentley)
