Independent Voters and the 2012 Election: Tough Crowd!

The New York Times/ CBS News poll that came out Wednesday reveals a disenchantment by independents with Pres. Obama. No indication of any enchantment with the dwindling Repub possibilities... Record high percentage of Americans identify as independents...

• Poll Shows Obama’s Vulnerability With Swing Voters (By JEFF ZELENY and DALIA SUSSMAN, NY Times) President Obama opens his re-election bid facing significant obstacles among independent voters, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, with the critical piece of the electorate that cemented his victory four years ago open to denying him a second term.
• Obama hurting with swing voters, poll shows (By MJ LEE, Politico) Just 31 percent of independent voters indicated a favorable opinion of the president in a New York Times/CBS News poll out Thursday, compared to a 38 percent favorability rating among all voters.
• Obama losing luster with independent voters: poll (Reuters) + Judicial Watch on Washington Corruption poll: The vast majority of registered voters (68%) believe President Obama has either worsened (27%) or not improved (42%) government transparency as he promised during the 2008 presidential campaign. Only slightly more than half of registered Democrats believe Obama has improved transparency.
• Survey: Campaign finance reform could be major 2012 issue (by Aaron Puebla, Campaigns & Elections) According to a new survey from Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, conducted for Democracy Corps, 62 percent of voters oppose the Court’s Citizens United ruling, which permitted unlimited campaign spending by corporations and unions. And more than three-quarters of voters say they would like to see candidates make campaign finance reform a “key” issue in 2012.
• A Libertarian Democrat Considers Mitt Romney - So much for the hope that Obama would move the party in a back-to-the-future Jeffersonian liberal direction. (Terry Michael, Reason.com) Then, within 10 months of taking office, he started a second war in Afghanistan. And he took three full years to withdraw troops from Iraq, negotiating until just weeks ago to keep troops there. As his premier domestic policy initiative, Obama rammed through a Democratic-controlled congress a welfare program for pharmaceutical companies, the centerpiece of which was—yes—a mandate forcing millions to buy coverage.
• Polls show Ron Paul emerging as key player in 2012 race (by Chris Hinyub, IVN) A new poll finds that a third-party bid by presidential hopeful Ron Paul would help re-elect president Obama, but not before taking away 9% of the President’s independent support and 17% of independent voters from Romney. In a separate poll, Paul was found to be competitive against Obama in a head-to-head contest as the GOP nominee.
• What If Voters Just Don’t Like Mitt Romney? (Benjy Sarlin & Kyle Leighton, TPM2012) While Republican voters are starting to come around to his candidacy, the rest of the country doesn’t seem too pleased with what they see. Romney’s lost six points on favorability among independent voters since Pew’s last poll in November, leading to a 13 point gap on the metric, 33 - 45.

• Record-High 40% of Americans Identify as Independents in '11 - More Americans identify as Democrats than as Republicans, 31% to 27% (by Jeffrey M. Jones, Gallup) In recent decades, Gallup has observed a pattern of increased independent identification in the year prior to a presidential election, and a decline in the presidential election year. The only exception to that was in 1992, when independent identification increased from 1991, perhaps the result of President Bush's high approval ratings in 1991 and Ross Perot's independent presidential candidacy in 1992.
• Voters, redeclarers keep poll workers busy (Nashua Telegraph) She and June Caron managed to keep up with the stream of voters, many of whom admitted that if they didn’t redeclare as independents right away, they could very well forget to do it at all. “That group (independents) has been the majority of our voters so far...”
• Independent Voters on the Rise but Do They Matter? (Huma Khan, ABC News) Forty percent of voters identified themselves as politically independent in 2011, according to a new Gallup poll released today, the highest number recorded in the poll yet. The previous high for independents was 39 percent in 1995 and 2007. Democrats won both presidential races in the following years.
• Opinion: The center is back — and Obama needs to be there (By Mark Penn, The Hill) And the more centrist the Republican nominee, the more centrist the president needs to be in order to win in 2012. The huge ideological gap that would have made running against the Republicans an easy romp is disappearing as the exit polls show that even primary voters are choosing practicality over partisanship. In both Iowa and New Hampshire, Romney won with those voters who thought he had a better chance to beat President Obama in November.