Poll: Romney tied with Obama in Florida

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has pulled even with President Obama in Florida, according to a new poll taken after the debt debate concluded. The survey was conducted by Quinnipiac University and was released Thursday morning.

Romney and Obama are tied with 44 percent apiece in the poll. Obama’s approval ratings in the state aren’t strong either: Forty-four percent of voters approve of the job he’s doing, while 51 percent disapprove. This is down from Obama’s 51 percent approval rating in a late May poll Quinnipiac conducted.

{mosads}”President Barack Obama’s numbers in the key swing state of Florida have gone south in the last two months. The debt-ceiling deal is not making any difference in that decline, and any bounce he got from the bin Laden operation is long since gone,” said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. “The president’s dropoff is huge among independent voters, who now disapprove almost 2-1.”

Obama’s numbers have remained steady with Democrats and Republicans. Among independent voters he slips from a 47 percent to 45 percent positive to negative rating in May
to a 61 percent to 33 percent disapproval in this poll. He still beats other Republicans in head-to-head match-ups, although some of that might be due to name recognition. Obama leads Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) 50 percent to 38, and leads Texas Gov. Rick Perry 44 percent to 39.

More from The Hill:

♦ ‘Trigger’ in debt deal might be lesser evil for health sector

♦ AT&T and T-Mobile spend $14 million on lobbying

♦ Murkowski: EPA rules could threaten power reliability

Obama won the Sunshine State with just 51 percent of the vote in 2008. Florida is gaining two Electoral College votes, and will be by far the largest swing state, wih 29 votes in the Electoral College.

The GOP field remains largely unsettled in Florida. Romney leads the GOP primary field with 23 percent, followed by Perry with 13 percent and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and Rep. Ron Paul (Texas) with 9 percent each. Businessman Herman Cain has 8 percent, with 6 percent for Bachmann. No other candidate tops 4 percent.

The poll of 743 registered voters was conducted from Aug. 1 through Aug. 2,
with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.6 percent. Live interviewers call land lines and cellphones. The subsample of 510 Republican voters was conducted from July 27 to Aug. 2 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.3 percent.