Herman Cain trails President Barack Obama by a mere five points in a head-to-head match up, according to a Rasmussen poll released Wednesday.
In a poll of 1,000 likely voters, 34 percent said they would vote for Cain, while 39 percent said they would vote for Obama. Fourteen percent said they would vote for another candidate, and 14 percent said they were not sure.
Of all the candidates polled in general election match-ups with Obama, Cain holds the president to his lowest percentage of the vote in the past month. No other candidate holds Obama to below 40 percent of the vote in Rasmussen’s September polling. Ron Paul had Obama at 39 percent, taking 38 percent of the vote in August, but in a poll released Wednesday, Obama now leads Paul by 10 percentage points: Forty-four percent to 34 percent.
Black voters break in favor of Obama in the poll, with 76 percent saying they would vote for him and just 3 percent saying they would vote for Cain. Twenty percent said they were not sure.
Independent voters, who identify as neither Republican nor Democrat, split evenly between the two, with 33 percent saying they would vote for Cain and 31 percent saying they would vote for Obama.
“Mr. Cain only has 50 percent name recognition, and President Obama never stopped campaigning,” said Cain’s communications director, Ellen Carmichael. “To be within five points of President Obama shows Mr. Cain’s rising momentum and the fact that more and more Americans are eager for a business leader, not a career politician, to turn this country around as America’s CEO.”
Cain scored an upset win at the Florida straw poll last Saturday, topping Rick Perry. He is well-liked among those Republicans who know him, but according to Gallup, that is still not a large percentage of Republican voters. Just 51 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents recognize Herman Cain.
The poll surveyed 1,000 likely voters from September 26 through September 27.
