It was announced on Sunday that a new Reuters/Ipsos poll shows Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney remaining close to President Barack Obama. The poll shows that Romney is just two points behind Obama for a third straight day after he presumably won the debate last week in Denver. The survey, conducted online, discovered that 47 percent of voters would place a vote for Obama while 45 percent said they would vote for Romney.
“Romney’s performance in the debate I think has improved his share of the vote for now … It’s a significant change from where we were a couple of weeks ago,” said Julia Clark, an Ipsos pollster. “I would say that if the debate was a game-changer, we would see Romney continue to make gains. He’s narrowed the race but he doesn’t seem to be overtaking Obama.”
The poll conducted Sunday found that eight percent of voters said that they have voted in person or via absentee ballot already. The same poll found that 84 percent of respondents have already decided which of the two candidates they are going to vote for in November. This leaves just 16 percent of the respondents to change their minds.
The Obama campaign received a boost on Friday with the unexpected strong economic report. Clark said that polls conducted usually do not reflect jobs reports that are positive.
“Americans don’t change their views on how things are doing economically based on jobs numbers,” but instead focus on personal experience, she said.
On Thursday of this week there will be a debate between Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan, Romney’s running mate, and Vice President Joe Biden. The poll conducted by Reuters/Ipsos surveyed 1,745 registered voters and 1,490 likely voters over a span of four days. The poll uses a credibility interval, which was set at plus or minus 2.7 percentage points for registered voters and 2.9 percentage points for likely voters.