For weeks, President Obama has kept up a steady drumbeat of criticism of Mitt Romney’s time as a “vulture capitalist” for Bain Capital—and a new poll suggests that this approach has been effective with voters.
Purple Strategies polled voters in 12 key swing states and discovered that more of them have a negative view of firms like Bain Capital than those who have a positive view. This is important news, considering that the president has been battered in recent weeks by high-profile supporters like Newark Mayor Cory Booker and former President Bill Clinton departing from the Obama script and saying that Romney’s time with Bain shouldn’t be seen as a negative.
Among the residents in the battlegrounds states of Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin, 47 percent said they believed “private equity hurts workers,” compared to 38 percent who say it “helps” the economy.
The numbers were the starkest in Ohio, a state that is in the must-win category for Obama. In Ohio, 49 percent said private equity companies put profits over workers, compared to 33 percent who said private equity “helps” the economy. Eighteen percent said they were “not sure.” In Florida, the gap was 47 percent saying it hurts the economy, 40 percent saying it helps. In Colorado, 44 percent said hurts and 43 percent said helps, while Virginia was 42 percent hurts and 44 percent helps.
