Ipsos/Reuters Daily Election Tracking: Obama 48% - Romney 43%

20 September 2012

Washington, D.C. - Today's Reuters/Ipsos poll shows no change from yesterday, with Obama at 48% and Romney at 43%.

Today's data also includes our Candidate Attributes question, which - despite widespread speculation about the effects of the `47%' video - show no change for Romney on factors such as `likeability', `a good person', and `representing America'.

On the Attributes question, Obama has the most sizable lead over Romney when it comes to being likeable (54% Obama vs. 28% Romney), eloquent (50% vs. 24%), fun to meet in person (49% vs. 24%) and understands people like me (46% vs. 28%).

Obama also trumps Romney on a good person (+16%), presidential (+12%), tough enough for the job (+12%), representing America (+12%), smart enough for the job (+10%), will protect American jobs (+9%), and can be effective in Washington (+4%).
Obama's scores have largely remained steady since Sept. 9 (when we last published this question), though there have been slight upticks on being a man of faith (+3%), likeable (+2%), and representing America (+2%).
Romney is seen as being stronger than Obama when it comes to being a man of faith (+11%) and having the right values (+9%).

Since Sept. 9, Romney has made gains on being fun to meet in person (+3%) and understanding people like me (+2%).

This is a daily rolling tracker - this means that we conduct 200-300 interviews a day, with occasional `boosts', and aggregate data from the previous four days. The sample overlap that occurs as part of this process means that day-to-day changes will be incremental rather than large.

These are findings from an Ipsos poll conducted for Thomson Reuters from Sept 16-20, 2012. For the survey, a sample of 2,078 American registered voters (age 18 and over) was interviewed online. The precision of the Reuters/Ipsos online polls is measured using a credibility interval. In this case, the poll has a credibility interval of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points for Registered Voters and 2.9 for Likely Voters. For more information about credibility intervals, please see the appendix.

The data were weighted to the U.S. current population data by gender, age, education, and ethnicity. Statistical margins of error are not applicable to online polls. All sample surveys and polls may be subject to other sources of error, including, but not limited to coverage error and measurement error. Figures marked by an asterisk (*) indicate a percentage value of greater than zero but less than one half of a per cent. Where figures do not sum to 100, this is due to the effects of rounding.

For more information on this news release please contact:

Julia Clark Vice President Ipsos Public Affairs 202.463.3623 [email protected]

Clifford Young Senior Vice President Ipsos Public Affairs 202.420.2016 [email protected]

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