Only 37% of Americans Think Obama Will Be Reelected

From ABCNews:

A majority of Americans expect Barack Obama to be a one-term president, an assessment on which, in past elections, the public more often has been right than wrong.

Just 37 percent in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll say they expect Obama to win re-election in November 2012; 55 percent instead expect the eventual Republican nominee to win. ABC’s George Stephanopoulos is asking the president about that result in an interview today.

It’s a challenging finding for the president because expectations can fuel voter enthusiasm – precisely the ingredient that led the GOP to its broad success in the 2010 midterms, when charged-up conservatives turned out while dispirited Democrats stayed home.

Democrats do expect Obama to win, but they say so only by 58-33 percent – a comparatively tepid vote of confidence within his own party. Republicans, by contrast, smell victory by a vast 83-13 percent. And independents – the linchpin of national politics – by 54-36 percent expect the Republican candidate to beat Obama.

This poll, produced for ABC News by Langer Research Associates, finds that the divisions among ideological groups tell a similar story. Conservatives are far more confident about the Republican nominee than are liberals about Obama, and moderates, albeit narrowly, are more likely to expect the challenger to win.

Read the whole thing here.