Mitt Romney predicted earlier this week on his bus tour that he would win Wisconsin's 10 electoral votes in November, but a new poll released Wednesday shows he is still trailing President Obama in the Badger State.
Among likely general-election voters, Obama leads Romney, 49 percent to 43 percent, according to the poll, conducted last week by Marquette Law School in Milwaukee. Seven percent of voters are undecided or did not respond to that question on the survey.
Despite the state's Republican lean since 2010 -- including Gov. Scott Walker's victory in a recall election earlier this month -- Obama remains popular there. Fifty-two percent of all registered voters approve of the job Obama is doing as president, while 43 percent disapprove. That narrowly outpaces Walker's 51 percent approval rating.
Obama also benefits from a popularity gap in the state. Fifty-three percent of voters have a favorable opinion of Obama, compared to 39 percent who have an unfavorable opinion. Romney's numbers, meanwhile, are upside-down: Just 35 percent view him favorably, and 43 percent view him unfavorably.
Marquette Law School has been polling in the state since earlier this year, but this is the first time they have surveyed likely November voters (previous polls included a subsample of likely voters in the June 5 recall election). In the previous poll, conducted in late May, just before the recall, Obama led Romney among all registered voters by 12 percentage points, 52 percent to 40 percent. Among that broader group in this survey, Obama's lead is 14 points, statistically unchanged over the past four weeks.
Democrats hammered the Marquette Law School poll in the days leading up to the Walker recall, saying that the poll was too Republican-leaning. The final Marquette poll showed Walker with a 7-point lead over Democratic Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, identical to his margin of victory in the election 10 days later.
The poll was conducted June 13-16 via landline and cellular telephone, surveying 707 registered voters. The margin of error for the full poll is plus-or-minus 3.8 percentage points. The poll includes 594 likely voters for the horse-race question; those results carry a margin of error of plus-or-minus 4.1 percentage points.
Romney's bus tour of blue-leaning battleground states took him to Janesville, Wis., on Monday, where -- appearing with House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus and Sen. Ron Johnson -- he told the assembled crowd, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, that Obama "just assumed from the very beginning Wisconsin was going to be his. But you know what? We're going to win Wisconsin." The poll was conducted prior to Romney’s visit to the state.
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