WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama has another reason to be happy with his new immigration policy.
According to a poll released Wednesday by Quinnipiac University, not only has his policy been positively received but also he now has a commanding lead over Mitt Romney in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, swing states considered necessary to win the general election.
The poll was conducted June 19-25, days after the Department of Homeland Security announced the administration’s immigration plan allowing people who came to the country illegally as children to obtain work permits and not face deportation.
Peter A. Brown presents the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute statistics to the press on Tuesday. (Samson Adams/Medill News Service)
In Florida, one of the key battleground states of the election, 56 percent of Hispanic voters now support Obama, a 7-point increase from Quinnipiac’s last poll a little more than a week ago. Thirty-two percent of Hispanics favor Mitt Romney.
But its not just Hispanics who support the new policy, the majority of people surveyed in all three states are also in favor of it.
In terms of overall numbers, Obama tops Romney 45 to 41 percent in Florida, 47 to 38 percent in Ohio and 45 to 39 percent in Pennsylvania.
“No one has won an election since 1960 without winning two of these states,” said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. “They tell us who’s going to be elected president.”
Besides Pennsylvania, which was already strongly in Obama’s favor, a Quinnipiac poll last month showed the two other states were too close to call, a sign indicating either a problem with Romney’s campaign or a big boost following the immigration announcement.
Perhaps a sign supporting the former, the president’s job approval ratings in the most-recent poll remains negative in Florida and Pennsylvania and candidate favorability ratings show Romney’s numbers are far lower than the president’s at just a bit more than 34 percent.
While the numbers aren’t ideal for Romney, Brown was quick to emphasize that the election is in November and its still June. “A month in politics is forever, four months in politics is an eternity,” he said.