NEW YORK -- A new FOX News poll of likely voters shows the Mitt Romney-Paul Ryan ticket receives the backing of 45 percent, while the Barack Obama-Joe Biden ticket garners 44 percent.
The poll, released Thursday, is the first FOX conducted among likely voters this year, which means an apples-to-apples comparison can’t be made to previous polls. Likely voters are eligible/registered voters who will most likely cast a ballot in this year’s presidential election.
The FOX News poll shows Romney has the edge among white Evangelical Christians (70-18 percent), white voters (53-36 percent), married voters (51-38 percent), men (48-40 percent) and seniors (50-41 percent).
President Obama has the advantage among black voters (86-6 percent), women (48-42 percent), lower income households (53-35 percent), young voters (48-39 percent) and unmarried voters (55-34 percent).
Independents back Romney by 42-32 percent (one in four is undecided). Independents were vital to Obama’s 2008 victory, backing him over Republican John McCain by 52-44 percent (Fox News exit poll).
About one voter in ten is undecided or says they’ll vote for someone other than Obama and Romney. Among just those voters, 55 percent disapprove of the job Obama is doing and only 17 percent think the country has changed for the better in the last four years.
The FOX News poll is based on live telephone interviews on landlines and cell phones from August 19 to August 21 among 1,007 randomly-chosen likely voters nationwide. Likely voters are registered voters who are considered most likely to vote in the November presidential election. The poll is conducted under the joint direction of Anderson Robbins Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R). For the total sample, it has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.