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PPP's first national poll of 2012 finds Barack Obama with his best standing against Mitt Romney since last May, right after the killing of Osama bin Laden. Obama leads Romney 49-44. It's not as if Obama's suddenly become popular. He remains under water with 47% of voters approving of him to 50% who disapprove. Romney's even less popular, with only 35% rating him favorably while 53% have a negative opinion of him. Over the last month Romney's seen his negatives with independents rise from 46% to 54%, suggesting that the things he has to say and do to win the...

Raleigh, N.C. – The Republican caucus in Iowa is headed for a photo finish, with the three leading contenders all within two points of each other. Ron Paul is at 20%, Mitt Romney at 19%, and Rick Santorum at 18%. Rounding out the field are Newt Gingrich at 14%, Rick Perry at 10%, Michele Bachmann at 8%, Jon Huntsman at 4%, and Buddy Roemer at 2%.

Without another Ann Selzer Iowa poll until the first of the year, the political class is now largely analyzing the caucuses through robo polls, internal campaign surveys and good old-fashioned anecdotal reporting.It's the first of these that gets the most attention - and sparks the most controversy.After the Democratic-aligned PPP - which has gotten some important races right -- posted their latest Iowa survey last night showing Ron Paul staking out a lead, the pushback quickly surfaced.At issue: whether PPP's sample is too heavy on Democrats and independents and is therefore skewing the results to make Paul seem stronger. (Any...

It's been a bad week for Newt Gingrich in our early state Republican polling, but we still find him with a good sized lead nationally. He's at 35% to 22% for Mitt Romney, 11% for Ron Paul, 7% for Michele Bachmann, 6% for Rick Perry, 4% for Rick Santorum, 3% for Jon Huntsman, and 1% for Gary Johnson. On the surface that's good news for Gingrich but looking under the hood it's more bad news to some extent. We haven't done a national poll in 5 weeks, too long ago to make a good comparison, but on 6 state polls...

I’ve been telling people PPP’s polling Iowa was making nonsense predictions. The pollster has doubled down. I’m going way out on a limb here, and if the actual results refudiate what I’m saying then I’m going to have to take some taunting, but I just don’t see how this poll remotely reflects reality, and I’m flatly saying it’s not predictive of the caucus results. The facts: 597 LVs, no mention of mobile handling. MoE 4. The results of this poll are going to get huge play. While they predict less for Mitt Romney than the apparent Rasmussen outlier for Romney,...

Before you put too much stock in the most recent PPP poll, you may want to review this April 2011 Hill article:

Ron Paul, the once-forgotten presidential candidate, is picking up steam in Iowa and now appears poised to overtake frontrunner Newt Gingrich, according to a new survey released today from the left-leaning Public Policy Polling. The poll finds support for Gingrich has slipped to 22%, with Ron Paul just behind with 21%. Mitt Romney trails in third place with 16%. That's a five-point drop in favorability for Gingrich, who has raced to the top of the Republican presidential field over the past month. PPP found Gingrich's favorability numbers have fallen 19 points over the past week. Meanwhile, support for Paul is...

Pizza magnate Herman Cain leads the latest Public Policy Polling polls in Maine and North Carolina. In North Carolina, Cain pulled in 30 percent of the votes. In Maine, Cain garnered 29 percent of the votes. Cain’s poll performances may be impacted by a POLITICO report that revealed that the former Godfather’s Pizza CEO faced sexual harassment allegations in the 1990s. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich took second place in the latest North Carolina PPP poll with 22 percent of the votes. In Maine, Gingrich finished in third place with 18 percent of the votes. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney...

Herman Cain's had a bad couple of news days that may or may not ultimately throttle his candidacy, but in our polling over the weekend he was continuing to fly high. In North Carolina, which a month ago was the first state we found him leading in, he'd built on his support over the last four weeks. And in Maine he held a small advantage over Mitt Romney, showing the ability to challenge Romney even on his home New England turf. In North Carolina Cain led with 30% to 22% for Newt Gingrich, 19% for Mitt Romney, 10% for Rick...

Businessman Herman Cain has risen to the top of a national poll of Republican primary voters, upending the GOP field yet again this cycle. Cain has the support of 30 percent of Republicans in the Public Policy Polling survey, trailed by Mitt Romney at 22 percent, Newt Gingrich at 15 percent, and Rick Perry at 14 percent. Cain is also the second choice of 24 percent of those polled — the highest of any candidate. In a two-person race, Romney would lead Perry 48-38, Cain would lead Romney 48-36, and Cain would destroy Perry 55-27. The poll was conducted before...

Rick Perry's led the Republican field in every Southern state that we've polled since he entered the Presidential race...until now. Mitt Romney continues to lead the way in Florida with 30% to 24% for Perry, 10% for Gingrich, 8% for Ron Paul, 7% for Herman Cain, 6% for Michele Bachmann, 3% for Jon Huntsman, 2% for Rick Santorum, and 1% for Gary Johnson.Perry had a poor debate performance in Florida Thursday night and our results suggest that the negative coverage he received from that did hurt him some in the state. We started this poll on Thursday night before the...

US Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry regularly touts his successes during his three terms as Texas Governor, but in Texas, there's not too much satisfaction with the work he has done, according to a new poll. The poll by Public Policy Polling showed that only 45 percent of the state's voters approve of Perry's job performance, while 48 percent say they don't approve, Politico reports. It, however, said that a majority of Texans supported Perry over US President Barack Obama. Perry leads Obama with 51 percent support to the President's 44 percent. The survey of 569 Texas voters was taken...

Mitt Romney has the lead in PPP's first Iowa poll since Mike Huckabee and Donald Trump exited the race, but with six different candidates polling in double digits it's clear this thing is wide open. Romney polls at 21%. Sarah Palin and Herman Cain are tied for second at 15%. Newt Gingrich is 4th with 12%, Michele Bachmann 5th with 11%, Tim Pawlenty 6th with 10%, Ron Paul 7th with 8%, and Jon Huntsman 8th with 0% (only one respondent to the poll picked him.) 8% said they supported someone else or were undecided. Cain and Palin have been the...

Herman Cain’s scrappy campaign for the GOP presidential nomination is making an impression. From Public Policy Polling of North Carolina: Mitt Romney has the lead in PPP’s first Iowa poll since Mike Huckabee and Donald Trump exited the race, but with six different candidates polling in double digits it’s clear this thing is wide open. Romney polls at 21%. Sarah Palin and Herman Cain are tied for second at 15%. Newt Gingrich is 4th with 12%, Michele Bachmann 5th with 11%, Tim Pawlenty 6th with 10%, Ron Paul 7th with 8%, and Jon Huntsman 8th with 0% (only one respondent...

President Barack Obama's approval rating with Ohio voters is below 50 percent but the Democratic president still appears to be in decent shape to carry the state in 2012 against potential GOP candidates, according to a Public Policy Polling survey released Tuesday. The survey from the Democratic polling company, based in Raleigh, N.C., found that 46 percent of Ohio voters approved the presidents performance while 49 percent disapproved. However, in matchups against potential GOP, Obama prevailed. The closest race was with former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, with Obama leading 46-42 percent...

In 2008, Barack Obama defeated John McCain in Nevada by a whopping 12%, 55%-43%. By analyzing a recent PPP release, we note that Palin is within 4% points, or even tied depending on how deep your analysis goes. First, the PPP results show that Obama leads Palin by 50%-39% in the state, which isn’t even bad by any measure. But, like always, that poll is incredibly skewed towards Democrats as they make up a whopping 45% of those polled, to just 35% Republicans and 20% Independents. (In 2010, the Democrats only accounted for 35% of the vote and in Democrat-heavy...

A week ago, I called out Public Policy Polling as a political spin machine instead of credible pollster: Still, there are a number of things to consider before taking PPP at their word. After 2010 elections, which PPP did a good job polling, many have noticed a dramatic pull toward narrative building as opposed to informational reporting. Especially their Charlie Sheen/Sarah Palin gimmick (Nate Silver’s words, not mine). While PPP is associated with Daily Kos, they’re accuracy in 2010 elections won over my doubts. However, in a very new development, they are also teaming up with the SEIU and given...

OMG, I’m dying here. We’ve found a lot of brutal poll numbers for Sarah Palin so far in 2011: down in South Dakota, down in South Carolina, down in Arizona, only up by 1 point in Texas, only up by 1 point in Nebraska to name a few. But this has to be the worst- independent voters say they would support Charlie Sheen over Palin for President by a 41/36 margin. Seriously. Despite her deficit with independents Palin does lead Sheen 49-29 overall. We also tested Barack Obama against Sheen and the President leads 57-24. Sheen is one of the...

It's a well known fact that Sarah Palin is the most unpopular major political figure in the country...one thing that may be less well known is that one of the states where voters have the dimmest view of her is her own home state of Alaska. We've polled Palin's favorability in ten states over the last couple months. In Alaska just 33% of voters have a favorable opinion of her to 58% with a negative one. The only place where fewer voters see her positively than her own home state is dark blue Massachusetts. Democrats hate Palin in Alaska...

A PPP poll shows that Michele Bachmann is easily the first choice of Minnesota Republicans to run for the Senate in 2012. 36 percent say they prefer her as the nominee, compared to 20 percent for Tim Pawlenty and 14 percent for Norm Coleman. I have no idea whether any of these three is interested in running for the Senate in 2012. But I think this poll adds credence to some of my speculation about what to expect in the 2012 Republican presidential primaries. I've been suggesting that, if she runs, Sarah Palin might be able to attract 30 to...