Going negative apparently is working for President Obama.
In key battleground states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, voters who are exposed to Obama’s message that Romney is a “vulture capitalist” who specialized in exporting jobs overseas while he ran Bain Capital have a more negative view of Romney’s business background than do voters in other states. And this perception is paying off at the polls, where Obama has moved comfortably ahead of Romney in national polls for the first time in months, leading him 48 to 44 percent in Gallup daily tracking polls.
According to the LA Times, the president’s upward movement began before the Supreme Court decision on Obamacare, so it’s not a reflection of the win handed to him by the conservative Roberts court.
The president is about to begin a bus tour through Ohio and Pennsylvania that’s being billed as a “celebration of the American worker.” You can be sure that as Obama steps before big crowds wearing a welcoming smile, the television airwaves will be filled with commercials portraying Romney as the scary job killer.
According to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, voters in battleground states, who are most exposed to campaign ads, viewed Romney’s business experience more negatively than voters nationwide or voters in states that typically voted Democratic.
“Everybody knows what they think about Barack Obama. But Mitt Romney is still hazy in voters’ minds,” said Peter A. Brown, who supervises the Quinnipiac survey. “The president has benefited from the fact that he was much more prevalent on television. You cannot underestimate that.”
So although candidates and incumbents like to bemoan the rise of negative campaigning, results like those Obama is currently seeing will insure that negative campaigning isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
