Mitt Romney
AFP/Washington

Republican Mitt Romney is gaining on rival Barack Obama on the favourability front but still trails the president, a new poll showed yesterday.
Romney’s favourable rating has jumped 14 points since February - the height of the Republican Party’s nomination battle - to 48%, while Obama’s has remained stable in recent months at 56%, according to a CNN/ORC International poll.
Both Obama and Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee to challenge for the White House in November, are seen in a negative light by 42% of respondents.
“The biggest gap between Obama and Romney’s favourable ratings is among younger Americans. More than two-thirds of those under 30 have a favourable view of Obama, compared to only four in 10 who feel that way about Romney,” CNN polling director Keating Holland said.
Romney dominates among seniors and has a “small advantage among independent voters, but that is offset by his lower favourable rating among Republicans than Obama has among Democrats,” he added.
Obama still maintains a 49-46% lead over Romney in the overall White House race, within the poll’s margin of error. Other recent polls show similar margins.
After last week’s lousy jobs report that showed the US unemployment rate ticking up to 8.2%, and as Obama’s criticism of Romney’s record at private equity firm Bain Capital raised some Democrats’ hackles, Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul clearly laid out the campaign’s plan of attack in the days ahead.
“This week we will continue to focus on how President Obama is hostile to job creators, particularly small business,” she said.
Romney’s campaign accuses Obama of having made a series of missteps on the economy while portraying the challenger as a successful job creator as governor of Massachusetts who has business acumen from his time at Bain.
“As president, Barack Obama has a record of trillion-dollar deficits, soaring national debt, lost jobs and the highest chronic unemployment in recorded history,” Saul added.
To hammer home the point, the campaign unleashed a barrage of 11 conference calls in swing states like Ohio and Florida, in which Romney surrogates took Obama to task for economic policies which they say stifle business.