before. good morning. martha: good to see you as always. what do you read into this? if you were advising mitt romney right now what do you tell him he needs to do? somehow he needs to get more traction on the economy. that is the strength of his candidacy. he can t beat the president on foreign policy he is not as popular as the p he needs to convince americans i can get you back to work again. that is tough in this environment with millions and millions of dollars of negative advertising to break through. but his message isn t clear enough at this point in time. martha: look at the next poll which goes to what you were speaking about. it asks who is better for middle class voters. take that up on the screen. we ll take a look at it. who would be better when it comes to looking out for the middle class. got president obama at 49. governor romney at 33%. you touched on something that may be very clear here. although people think he would be better at fixing the economy, mitt romney
that is true. and i think the president, i would be worried because if you look inside the polls, he has such advantages on a lot of intangibles such as ability, whatever, but he is not getting a big enough lead. he had a big lead before. this is a referendum on the president or a choice? right now when it is this close it is looking like a choice. speaking of definition, obama is seen as the protector of the middle-class and romney the guy who can fix the economy. the problem for obama, the economy is the issue. man to man, president obama, beats romney but this is not a personality choice as much as the obama campaign will try to make it that but about the direction of the country. and the polls you cited are critically important to the definition of the race. but neither candidate has
are 1 in 176 million. back to hardball. welcome back to hardball and back to politics, there is good news and bad news for mitt romney in the latest poll. romney is headed for a win in the next primary there, but the poll says he would lose badly to obama in november. the president beats romney by 17 points. that s bigger than what he had against john mccain. and romney s problems extend to other key battleground states. florida, in florida obama leads by seven. in ohio, the presence up by six. pennsylvania he is ahead by only three, that s tricky for the
you can finish first and, good second places, the race narrows to two candidates over time and that is where we have our opportunity. jamie: joining me now, the anchor of fox news sunday, chris wallace. great to see you. it will be interesting hear from rick santorum today. he says the field is expected to narrow. do you get the sense he thinks it is narrowing too much? i m sorry. i didn t hear the last word. jamie: could you get the sense, though he s expressing his optimism as you would expect he thinks the field is narrowing too much? no, he d love the field to narrow and would like it to narrow. he wants to stay in it and wants to see newt gingrich get out desperately and one of the points he makes is, you take the gingrich and the san storm vote, that it beats romney in most cases and would love. one explicitly call for newt
there another poll shows mitt romney losing. the president beats romney by nine points in a new the washington post abc news poll. that s the first time the president s approval rating has hit the 50% mark since way back in last summer. and it has been going up. team fox coverage continues now live in indianapolis tehran paul event. what s congressman paul have going on there tonight? you know, shep, ron paul continues to rock the youth vote if you will. he just did an event in saint cloud minnesota before 900 people. many of them young, many of them college students. his messages hitting a lot of familiar points and they do very well with the young people. he talks about increased liberty, decreased government. decreased spending overseas. particularly while the homeland is broke. it does he have well with this crowd. he has a big room here in minneapolis he is trying to fill. he has the crowd streaming in right now, shepard. shepard: the candidates that say that minnesota is th