WashPost Poll Story Goes Looking for Pro-Obama Silver Linings

July 10th, 2012 9:00 AM

The Washington Post reports on the front page Tuesday that their poll has Obama and Romney dead even at 47 to 47. The chart inside shows that after opening a 51-44 lead in April by the Post's measurement, Obama’s lead has vanished.

But the Post story by Dan Balz and Jon Cohen demonstrated that the Post went searching for happy news for Obama in swing-state subsets that suggest Obama’s anti-Bain ads are working against Romney:


Romney’s business background has been a focus of the ads against him — and the spots have had some results. Compared with February, more people in the eight states identified as “toss-ups” by The Washington Post  now say Romney did more to cut than create jobs in the United States when he worked as a corporate investor before entering politics. And twice as many swing-state voters consider Romney’s work in buying and restructuring companies a reason to oppose, rather than to support, his candidacy. Just over half of all voters say that work is not a big factor for them.

The Post is a bit invested in these Obama and Obama-super-PAC spots, since the Democrats often cite the Post as their authority on Romney supposedly backing “outsourcing” at Bain. But at least today’s Post also has a front-page article on how “critics on the Left” say Obama hasn’t done enough to prevent outsourcing during his presidency. The headline in the paper is “Obama struggles to make headway on outsourcing.”

The Post story also touted that somehow, voters have found the Supreme Court persuasive on ObamaCare:

Americans split evenly on the Supreme Court’s recent 5 to 4 decision upholding Obama’s health-care law, with 42 percent approving of the decision and 44 percent opposing it. But in a significant change, the legislation is now viewed less negatively than it was before the ruling. In the new survey, 47 percent support the law and 47 percent oppose it. In April, 39 percent backed it and 53 percent opposed it.