WASHINGTON — In a dead-even race for the White House, a majority of American voters say their candidate must win for the country to get stronger. A FOX News poll released Thursday also finds Republican Mitt Romney tops President Obama on economic issues, while Obama’s biggest strengths are mainly foreign policy and fighting terrorism.
Voters trust Romney to do a better job than Obama on cutting government spending (20 points ahead), handling immigration, encouraging job creation, improving the economy (each by seven points) and handling taxes (four points).
Obama is trusted more on education (18 points ahead of Romney), terrorism (13 points in front), foreign policy (11 points), bringing the country together and standing up to special interests (both by five points), strengthening families (four points) and health care (three points).
If the presidential election were held today, the poll shows the race evenly split 43 percent each for Obama and Romney. Last month Obama had a seven percentage-point edge over Romney, while in April the candidates were tied at 46 percent each.
Among those “extremely” interested in the presidential election, Romney tops Obama by 50-42 percent. Republicans are slightly more likely than Democrats and independents to be extremely interested.
The poll also hints at a high turnout in November.
Nearly 80 percent of those polled said they would “definitely” vote if the election were “next week,” and among just those voters the race is mostly unchanged from the overall tied results: 45 percent of “definite” voters would back Obama and 44 percent would vote for Romney.
All in all, 71 percent of voters think their candidate must win for the US to be a stronger country. That is a bit lower than the 74 percent who felt that way in October 2008. Some 26 percent today say it does not matter who wins.
The president continues to have a higher favorable rating than his challenger. Fifty-four percent of voters have a positive opinion of Obama, his highest favorable rating in more than a year. The new poll shows 46 percent view Romney favorably, which is the highest positive rating he has ever received in a FOX News poll.
The Fox News poll is based on landline and cell phone interviews with 907 randomly-chosen registered voters nationwide and is conducted under the joint direction of Anderson Robbins Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R) from June 3 to June 5. For the total sample, it has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.
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