good or bad thing. once people in that insider world have kind of decided what s good and what s bad about ba ix n, then we can bring that to the masses and start paying attention really more in september and october. i want to talk quickly about the perspective of average folks. when you start asking about finance and you start asking about wall street, getting away from the money and power centers in new york and washington, where does wall street sentiment stand around the country right now? well, i think if you want to look at that, all you have to do is look at the 2010 election. the wall street bailout was very unpopular when it came to house and senate races in 2010. if you looked at a member of congress who voted for the legislation versus against it, it was almost night and day as far as who survived and who didn t. so i think that the obama campaign looked at that and said, hey, wall street is extremely unpopular. mitt romney worked on wall street and was very much a part
support among the base since the primary has ended. and i think when it all comes down to it, the white house sees it as a dead heat. we are still fairly early but a lot of people are not completely focusing in on this. the way the white house looks at these things is it could be good news, but we have a long campaign and things will change. let s not get too excited. david, can mitt romney pick up 270 votes to become president of the united states without winning one of the aforementioned states? i think it is really important for him to win states like florida. and, you know, you see the president putting a lot of time and groundwork into some of the states because each one he can pick off is going to be important, but it is true for both of them. these are very important states for romney and his campaign is very focused. rachel, one of the headlines on politico over the past few days, one of the more popular headlines, obama stumbles out of the debate, referring to the pet
latest nbc news polls show that obama and mitt romney are essentially neck and neck. a closer read of that poll gives us the early line of what voters will be thinking about come november. joining me, frank yang, partner at the yang-hart research group. let s start with the president s approval rating. 48%. historically, where does he need to get that number to lock in reelection? you know, i think historically, if a president is over 50%, he s in pretty good shape for reelection. so, you know, five months to go in the campaign, the president it s going to be a tough race, but i think the president has the upper edge right now. one of the things that struck us about this poll, the early reads on the congressional race, specifically. let s switch to those. the poll shows preference pretty
money. and i think that they saw that as a silver bullet, almost. it hasn t exactly turned out that way, but it is still very much a valid issue and wall street really is not a popular thing to this day in america. bain defended its work in a letter to investors saying, in part, 80% of the companies in which it has invested saw revenues grow. this is a letter bain capital sent. 80% of the companies saw revenues grow, is that necessarily good for employees? you can grow revenues by cutting jobs and expenditures being cut, right? right. some of the companies didn t work out and mitt romney and his colleagues still made money. i think though that we shouldn t forget that this is wall street. people may not like it, it may not be warm and fuzzy, but the name of the game on wall street is making money. and, you know, obviously it helps in bain s investment that is the companies are success.
that to talk about bain, the economy and that s the key issue. at least for now. exactly. there s another poll i want to call your attention to, a new washington post/abc poll showing mitt romney leading president obama specifically among white middle-class voters who are struggling financially. not just leading the president here, but leading the president by a significant margin. is this is this a statistic that s striking to you? or is this about what you would expect considering the two candidates we have in the race? when you look four years ago, president obama lost the same demographic by a wide margin. this is even a wider margin that causes concern at the white house. you have seen them sort of focus on different group that is might be able to make up the gaps. the strong women voter base and gay voters as well. they have also sent vice president biden, who has always been thought to appeal this group of voters, white males in rust-belt states and things like