Zogby Poll: Herman Cain 20 Point Lead Over Gov. Romney

Alex Levinson - In news sure to inject shock and awe into the Republican political primary season, a Zogby poll released Thursday showed Herman Cain leading the Republican field, topping former front-runner Mitt Romney by an astonishing 20 points. Cain would also narrowly edge out Obama in a general election, the poll found, by a 46�“44 margin.

Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, would lose by a point to the president, 40 percent to 41 percent. Texas governor Rick Perry, who has slipped in the polls of late, would lose to the president 45 percent to 40 percent.

The poll found that 38 percent of Republican primary voters said they would vote for Cain if the primary were held today. Eighteen percent said they would throw their support to Romney, while 12 percent each said they would vote for Perry and Texas congressman Ron Paul. No other candidate attracted double-digit support.

This is the second month in a row in which Zogby has found Cain leading the pack; he has surged another 10 points ahead of his competitors since September. Romney, on the other hand, has remained in the same place, while Perry’s share of the primary vote in the Zogby poll has steadily declined since he announced his candidacy in August.

Other pollsters have found Cain at or near the top of the field, with Fox News declaring him a top-tier candidate following its poll last week. That poll found Cain had 17 percent of the vote, trailing Perry by just two points and Romney by five.

A CBS News poll released Tuesday found Romney and Cain tied at 17 percent, with Perry trailing at 12 percent; a YouGov/Economist poll released Thursday found Cain leading with 21 percent, four points ahead of Romney.

Though many have questioned Cain’s viability as a legitimate candidate, voters are clearly giving him another look.

The IBOPE Zogby International poll is based on an online October 3�“5 survey of 1,581 voters, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points. The sample of likely Republican primary voters included 796 Americans, and has an margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

Fitch: Italy And Spain Credit Rating Downgraded

Developing: Fitch on Friday cut Italy's sovereign credit rating by one notch to A+ from AA-, saying the move reflected the worsening of the euro zone's debt crisis and an erosion of market confidence caused by the government's initially hesitant response to the rise in its bond yields.

Fitch, the third ratings agency to downgrade Italy in recent weeks following similar moves by Standard & Poor's and Moody's, maintained a negative outlook on its rating, citing a risk of fiscal slippage and a possible further intensification of the crisis in the euro zone as a whole.

(Reporting By Gavin Jones)

Fitch on Friday cut Spain's credit ratings by two notches, just a few minutes after downgrading Italy, saying the intensification of the euro zone debt crisis has had a negative impact in the entire region.

The ratings agency cut Spain's credit ratings to AA-minus from AA-plus. It kept a negative outlook on the new rating, in a sign more downgrades are possible in the next couple of years.
Risks to the fiscal consolidation of Spain have risen as prospects for the country's economic growth declined, Fitch said in a statement.

CBS Poll Shows 69% Believe Obama Has Not Helped The Economy

Ed Morrissey - The latest CBS poll more or less corroborates other media polls on Barack Obama’s performance on the economy, and overall as well.  Over two-thirds of Americans agree with Obama’s admission yesterday that they are worse off (or at least no better off) after almost three years with Obama at the helm:

Sixty-nine percent say the president has not made real progress on the economy, which voters overwhelmingly cite as their most important issue. Twenty-five percent say he has made real progress.

Perceptions are not improving. The percentage who said Mr. Obama has made real progress has dropped 10 points from a survey 13 months ago, when 35 percent said he had made real progress.

Just 35 percent of Americans approve of Mr. Obama’s handling of the economy, and his approval rating on the issue has been below 40 percent since February. Fifty-three percent approve of his handling of the economy.

More bad news for Obama: Less than one in four now blame George W. Bush for today’s economic conditions (22%), although blame-Bush still gets a narrow plurality.  Wall Street and Congress fall into a virtual tie (16/15, respectively) while Obama gets 12% of the sole blame, and 10% blame “all of the above.”  If Obama wants to run again on a blame-Bush platform, it’s not going to have much resonance.  Obama’s job performance only gets a wan 44/44, not his lowest rating in the series, but not much above that point, either.

Respondents are now more likely to express disappointment in Obama, too, although not quite a majority.  Forty-three percent say he’s failed to meet their expectations as President, and only 9% say he’s exceeded expectations.  What’s fascinating is that Obama doesn’t do much better with Democrats, where 43% say he’s accomplished about what they expected and 39% say less.  Only 15% say he’s exceeded their expectations.  If Obama wants to launch a base-turnout strategy for 2012, that’s a pretty narrow base to leverage. He actually does slightly better among independents, with 48% saying he met expectations and 41% disappointed.

As always, the sample in the CBS poll gets tweaked to Republican disadvantage, but not as egregiously as usual.  The original sample had a D/R/I of 34/26/40, but CBS weighted it to 31/24/45 — which oversamples indies and significantly undersamples Republicans.  It doesn’t do much to hide the fact that Obama is failing to gain traction with his new hard-Left populist rhetoric, or distracting from his failure on the economy.

WaPo/ABC Poll: Herman Cain On The Rise

Ed Morrissey - The question from last week’s sudden shift in momentum towards Herman Cain in the GOP presidential primary race was whether Cain could actually vie for the nomination.  After today’s poll from the Washington Post and ABC, the question may be whether anyone but Mitt Romney could stop him.  Right now, it certainly doesn’t like Rick Perry could, whose fortunes have fallen faster than they rose after two bad debates:

After a quick rise in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, Texas Gov. Rick Perry has experienced an almost equally dramatic decline, losing about half of his support over the past month, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Perry’s slide, which comes after several uneven performances in candidate debates, has allowed former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney to resurface atop the GOP field. But the most direct beneficiary of the disenchantment with Perry is businessman Herman Cain, who is now tied for second place.

You know who this, er, doesn’t help?  Oddly enough, Sarah Palin and Chris Christie:

Christie is feverishly assessing whether to do so, with a decision expected this week. But the Post-ABC poll finds only modest public support for a Christie candidacy. About 42 percent of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents say they would like to see the New Jersey governor join the race.Thirty-four percent, say no, with the rest offering no opinion.

That finding is far more positive than the receptivity to a candidacy by Sarah Palin. Two-thirds of Republicans say they do not want the former Alaska governor to seek the party’s nomination.

There is plenty more to this poll in the GOP race, but let’s shift to Barack Obama for a moment.  The buzz over Cain’s sudden momentum will obscure the fact that Obama gets the lowest job-approval rating in the WaPo/ABC series at 42/54, which is also the highest disapproval of the series.  A month ago Obama was at 43/53, and he launched his new hard-Left populist strategy, along with a jobs bill and a deficit-reduction proposal.  Both seem to have flopped — even with a sample tilted toward Democrats at 32/25/37.

Oddly, Obama falls into virtual ties with Romney, Perry, and Christie among registered voters, but an overwhelming majority expects Obama to lose next year, 55/37. Among registered voters, 46% say they will definitely not vote for Obama next year, while only 23% say they definitely will — a slight improvement over August’s results.  Also, for all of the media talk about the collapse in polling for the Tea Party, the WaPo/ABC poll shows support at 42/47, not terribly different from its track all year long, and slightly better than April’s 42/49.

Back to the horse race.  The rankings don’t change when narrowing the respondents to registered voters, with Romney leading, Cain and Perry tied for second, and Christie in fourth place to close out those in double digits.  Palin and Ron Paul are tied among general-population respondents, followed by Newt Gingrich and then Michele Bachmann, with Rick Santorum and Jon Huntsman at 1% each — which might put both out of the next debate.  The order doesn’t change at all with Palin out of the mix, or with Christie out of the mix, either.

The big news here is Herman Cain, especially among those to whom he is news.  He easily gets the best score among the contestants on the question “the more you hear about X, do you like him/her more or less?”  Cain gets at 47/12 on that question, while Romney gets a 38/35 and Perry gets a red-flag 30/44.  Christie comes close to Cain in this category at 43/23, but Palin’s closer to Perry at 35/49.

Cain appears to have caught fire, but as we saw with Perry, all that means is that the scrutiny of the media — and the other candidates — will now turn to Cain.  We’ll see how well he handles the heat, but another good debate performance might push him into the leading Not-Romney slot in the race.