CHAR­LOTTE, North Car­oli­na-Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma goes in­to his De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Na­tion­al Con­ven­tion get­ting high marks from vot­ers on per­son­al at­trib­ut­es but fac­ing doubts about his han­dling of the US econ­o­my, a Reuters/Ip­sos poll found. Over­all, Re­pub­li­can pres­i­den­tial op­po­nent Mitt Rom­ney led Oba­ma 46 per cent to 45 per cent among like­ly vot­ers on who they said they sup­port­ed at this stage of the cam­paign, with nine weeks to go un­til the No­vem­ber 6 elec­tion.

The on­line poll showed that vot­ers found Oba­ma more lik­able than Rom­ney by 50 per cent to 30 per cent. Forty-one per cent said they be­lieved Oba­ma "un­der­stands peo­ple like me," while 28 per cent said that about Rom­ney. But on the over­rid­ing is­sue of the cam­paign, the strength of the US econ­o­my, Oba­ma has left Rom­ney an open­ing, with 75 per cent be­liev­ing the econ­o­my is on the wrong track com­pared to 17 per cent who think it is go­ing in the right di­rec­tion.

The over­all poll re­sult is lit­tle changed from Sun­day's poll when the two can­di­dates were tied at 45 per cent. Rom­ney got on­ly a short-lived, small bounce in the polls from the Re­pub­li­can Na­tion­al Con­ven­tion in Tam­pa last week, and Oba­ma now has the chance to gain a bounce of his own. He is to ad­dress his par­ty's con­ven­tion in Char­lotte, North Car­oli­na on Thurs­day night. At this point there were in­di­ca­tions that Re­pub­li­cans were more en­thu­si­as­tic about vot­ing for Rom­ney than De­moc­rats for Oba­ma.

The poll found Rom­ney got the sup­port of 86 per cent of Re­pub­li­cans, com­pared to 79 per cent sup­port for Oba­ma from De­moc­rats. In­de­pen­dent vot­ers were ba­si­cal­ly tied, 36 per cent for Rom­ney to 35 per cent for Oba­ma. Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden, who speaks be­fore Oba­ma on Thurs­day, was viewed un­fa­vor­ably by 51 per cent com­pared to 49 per cent who sup­port­ed him.

The rolling poll mea­sures sen­ti­ment dur­ing the two-week con­ven­tion sea­son by polling over the pre­vi­ous four days. Mon­day's find­ings are from an Ip­sos poll con­duct­ed for Reuters from Au­gust 31-Sep­tem­ber 4. For the sur­vey, 1,447 Amer­i­can reg­is­tered vot­ers were in­ter­viewed on­line. The pre­ci­sion of the Reuters/Ip­sos on­line polls is mea­sured us­ing a cred­i­bil­i­ty in­ter­val. In this case, the poll has a cred­i­bil­i­ty in­ter­val of plus or mi­nus 2.9 per­cent­age points for all re­spon­dents.

Reuters