Ron Paul tied with Obama in General Election Poll

by Luis R. Miranda
The Real Agenda
January 17, 2012

U.S. president Barack Obama has managed to remain in the mid forties in the latest  CNN/ORC International Poll released Monday. Both Republican presidential candidates Ron Paul and Mitt Romney are tied with the president, with Paul making the most gains since this type of polls began to be conducted and published. While Mitt Romney is just a point above Obama, 48 to 47, within the margin of error, Mr. Paul trails Obama by two points, 48-46, also within the margin of error.

With Ron Paul gaining more and more ground among independent voters in the last few polls, the most recent poll results would be good news for the Paul campaign as the number of independent voters grows larger by the week, and many of those voters show their preference for Mr, Paul over president Obama.

According to the poll, interviews were conducted with 1,021 adult Americans, who were contacted conducted by telephone by ORC International on January 11-12, 2012. The margin of sampling error for results based on the total sample is plus or minus 3 percentage points. Polled voters include 928 interviews among registered voters.

When it comes to registered voters, in a direct match between Paul and Obama, the republican candidate has gained one percentage point from an earlier poll conducted by ORC on December 16-18, while Obama has lost 4 percentage points against the Congressman from Texas. Meanwhile Mitt Romney has gained 3 points against Obama, who has lost 5 points. The rest of the candidates lose to Obama by margins that go beyond the margin of error, with differences between 8 and 12 points.

The poll becomes biased when it comes to comparing Obama’s characteristics and qualities with the two candidates, because it only asks about Obama’s and Romney’s leaving out the opinion of the voters with respect to Ron Paul. This is a common trend in polls conducted by main stream media, where only the incumbent and the establishment candidates are fully evaluated, while marginalizing others. Aspects addressed by this section of the poll include values, leadership, personality, the candidate’s skill set to deal with the economic depression as well as a candidate’s changing positions on the issues. This last two aspects are key, because Ron Paul’s record on the issues throughout the past 30 years would easily beat Obama’s and Romney’s combined. Ron Paul is also the only candidate with full understanding of the causes of the current financial meltdown and what measures need to be taken to reverse it.

It is not wise for CNN or any other mass dinosaur medium to include Ron Paul in that part of the poll, because the results would be devastating for both the president and Romney.

Another interesting caveat that comes out of the poll is that when asked whether voters see either Romney or Obama as agreeing with their concerns, being able to fix the economy or caring about the issues the voters care about, neither Obama nor Romney poll much higher that 53%. This number would probably be much lower had they included Ron Paul in the questionnaire.

When asked whether Mitt Romney is in touch with the problems of ordinary Americans, the leading presidential candidate barely hits 41%, while Obama gets 53%. Another aspect in which Obama polled high was when voters responded if they felt that Obama changed positions for political gain. There Obama polled the highest with 56%. But Romney polled even higher here with 61%. In other words, people are clear that both Obama and Romney will say and do whatever it takes to get the votes of Americans next November.

Given the fact the poll excludes Ron Paul from this important part of the questionnaire, the detailed results of the poll simply reflect what we all know. Both Obama and Romney are seen as dishonest candidates who the public not only do not trust, but also who would be incapable to bring confidence to the Americans, help fix the economy or create jobs for the millions of Americans who have lost it.