The Morning Plum: Romney’s ‘47 percent’ problem just won’t go away

By Greg Sargent

The presidential race is a genuine dead heat. Mitt Romney could very well win if Obama doesn’t perform well in the remaining debates. Romney enjoyed a genuine post-debate surge and polling guru types say his bump is durable. That said, the new Post/ABC News poll suggests a few things about what Romney didn’t accomplish at the debate, too.

The Post poll finds Obama leading Romney by 49-46 among likely voters, a dead heat, and by 50-43 among registered voters — both basically unchanged since before the Denver showdown. It shows Romney’s image has improved significantly, at least in a general sense: More than twice as many people say their opinions of Romney improved since before his strong debate performance.

But here are the things Romney’s debate performance did not change:

* Obama still has a large lead on who better understands people’s economic problems, 51-40 — virtually unchanged since before the debate.

* Sixty eight percent say Obama does more for the middle class than the wealthy, while only 31 percent say Romney would favor the middle class, versus 58 percent who say he’d favor the wealthy. Those numbers, too, are virtually unchanged.

* Obama’s advantage on who is more trusted to handle Medicare has actually gone up, from 47-43 to 53-38. This was a major topic at both debates, and recall that Joe Biden made a strong appeal to voters to trust their “instincts” on who is better for the program.

* Obama holds a slight edge on who is more trusted to handle the economy, 48-44 — with no movement toward Romney since before the debates. In this poll, Romney has not regained the advantage on the economy he had enjoyed before the conventions wiped it out.

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