A Polling Trend is Beginning .. Fox News Poll of Likely Voters Has Romney Ahead of Obama 45 % to 44%

The polls are beginning to trend to Romney just in front of the Republican National Convention …

In the most recent poll of “likely” voters, Fox News has the race a near tie with Mitt Romney leading President Barack Obama 45% to 44%. Don’t look now but a trend is beginning in the national presidential polls as Mitt Romney has tied and gone into the lead in several polls.

Barack Obama should be troubled by the latest poll as by a 54% to 42% margin, more voters disapprove than approve of Obama’s handling of the economy. Also, Obama’s overall job performance stands at 46% approve and 50% disapprove. Most importantly, Independents back Romney by 42% to 32% with one in four is undecided. One might ask why Romney is only ahead by 1%, maybe as Hot Air points out the data sampling was D+4. My opinion and theirs as well is that the election day turnout will be closer, if not a tie. That being said, even with this sampling data, Romney leads.

Less than a week before the Republican convention begins, the race for the White House is a virtual tie. According to a Fox News poll of likely voters, 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 has 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.

Full poll results can be read HERE.

Charles Krathammer discusses the new Fox poll numbers

Red State has a break down of the demographics, including the all important voter intensity which most likely will be the driving force as to who turns out for their candidate and who wins the election.

Voter intensity: 47% of Democrats polled were “extremely interested” to vote in November, while 59% of Republicans felt the same way. By far, self-described Tea Partiers were the most interested in voting (71%) of all sub-groups. Also, only 27% of voters under the age of 35, a critical demographic for Obama, were extremely interested in voting; 58% of those over 65 fit into this category.