Obama 47%, Palin 35%

Sarah Palin, it seems, is the only one who know for sure whether she’ll run for president, but she continues to run worse against President Obama than the four top Republican hopefuls already in the race.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely U.S. Voters finds Obama earning 47% of the vote to Palin’s 35%. Fourteen percent (14%) prefer some other candidate, and three percent (3%) are undecided. (To see question wording, click here.)  That’s a bit closer than the results from three weeks ago.

Palin is scheduled to make a major appearance at a Tea Party gathering in Iowa today with many speculating about what she might announce. Voters aren’t really sure if she’ll run for president, but 60% think it would be bad for the GOP if Palin enters the race.  Even most Republicans (52%) feel that way.

Obama now picks up 83% of the Democratic voter against Palin and leads among voters not affiliated with either major party by a 45% to 32% margin. Palin captures 66% of the Republican vote, with nearly one-in-four GOP voters (22%) favoring another candidate or undecided.

Eighty-four percent (84%) of Tea Party voters prefer Palin. Sixty percent (60%) of those who are not members of the grass roots movement opt for the president.

For the first time this year, Texas Governor Rick Perry, the current Republican frontrunner, leads Obama in a national Election 2012 survey – by a narrow 44% to 41% margin.  Obama earns 39% to 48% of the vote depending on which GOP hopeful he is matched against.

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The match-up survey of 1,000 Likely Voters were conducted August 31-September 1, 2011 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error for the surveys is +/- 3% with a 95% level of confidence.  Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.