Poll: Most expect Obama victory

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

Most Americans expect President Barack Obama to win a second term — including more than a quarter of Republican Mitt Romney’s supporters, a new Associated Press-GfK poll shows. Still, the race remains a dead heat less than three months out from Election Day.

Overall, registered voters are about evenly split, with 47 percent saying they plan to back Obama and Vice President Joe Biden and 46 percent favoring Romney and Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. About one in four voters say they are undecided or could change their minds between now and Nov. 6.

The contours of the race are little changed from June, when an AP-GfK survey showed 47 percent of voters backing Obama and 44 percent siding with Romney, suggesting Romney’s decision earlier in August to tap Ryan as his running mate was not the game-changing event he may have desired.

Both campaigns have been competing fiercely for a small sweet spot in the middle of the electorate: independent voters who say they don’t lean toward either party. Romney has a narrow lead among that group with 41 percent, compared with 30 percent for Obama.

But few think the Romney-Ryan ticket will win in the end.

Asked to predict the race’s outcome, 58 percent of adults say they expect Obama to be re-elected, whereas just 32 percent say he will be voted out of office.

Even among those who say they have a great deal of interest in following the campaigns’ bitter back and forth, a majority expect Obama to win.

Partisans generally expect their own candidate to win, though Republicans are less sure about Romney than Democrats are about Obama — 83 percent of Democrats say Obama will be re-elected while 57 percent of Republicans think he’ll be voted out of office.