Is Obama Still a Lock for '12?

When President Obama won in 2008, people already thought he would automatically be a two-term president. I still think it's more likely than not that Obama will win next year, but some folks think Obama is in trouble in the battleground states:

The race for president isn’t a national contest. It’s a state-by-state battle to cobble an electoral vote majority. So while the national polls are useful in gauging the president’s popularity, the more instructive numbers are those from the battlegrounds.

Those polls are even more ominous for the president: In every reputable battleground state poll conducted over the past month, Obama’s support is weak. In most of them, he trails Republican front-runner Mitt Romney. For all the talk of a closely fought 2012 election, if Obama can’t turn around his fortunes in states such as Michigan and New Hampshire, next year’s presidential election could end up being a GOP landslide.

Take Ohio, a perennial battleground in which Obama has campaigned more than in any other state (outside of the D.C. metropolitan region). Fifty percent of Ohio voters now disapprove of his job performance, compared with 46 percent who approve, according to a Quinnipiac poll conducted from July 12-18.

Among Buckeye State independents, only 40 percent believe that Obama should be reelected, and 42 percent approve of his job performance. Against Romney, Obama leads 45 percent to 41 percent—well below the 50 percent comfort zone for an incumbent.

The news gets worse from there. In Michigan, a reliably Democratic state that Obama carried with 57 percent of the vote, an EPIC-MRA poll conducted July 9-11 finds him trailing Romney, 46 percent to 42 percent. Only 39 percent of respondents grade his job performance as “excellent” or good,” with 60 percent saying it is “fair” or “poor.” The state has an unemployment rate well above the national average, and the president’s approval has suffered as a result.

I still think it's just way too early to start thinking that Obama is in trouble. While things look pretty dark for the president right now and the economy is in the tank, we are still well over a year before the election and six months before the GOP primaries begin. If we start seeing these week numbers in February or April of 2012, then its time for the Obama team to worry.

The other factor is that we don't know who the GOP nominee will be. It very well could be Romney, but you can never count Michelle Bachmann out. Who that challenger will be and how they run their campaign will be a factor in whether or not Obama gets a second term.