Election 2012: Generic Republican 46%, Obama 43%
For the fifth week in a row, a generic Republican candidate edges President Obama in a hypothetical 2012 election match-up.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely U.S. Voters finds a generic Republican candidate earning 46% of the vote, while the president picks up support from 43%. Four percent (4%) prefer some other candidate, and another seven percent (7%) are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
Last week, the GOP candidate received 47% of the vote to Obama’s 42%. In weekly surveys conducted since the beginning of May, the Republican has earned 43% to 48% support, while support for the president has ranged from 41% to 45%. Rasmussen Reports will provide new data on this generic matchup each week until the field of prospective Republican nominees narrows to a few serious contenders.
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The survey of 3,500 Likely Voters was conducted on August 1-7, 2011 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 2 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.
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