President Obama, Mitt Romney “Dead Even” in Arizona, if Poll Is to Be Trusted

According to the latest poll of Arizonans, President Obama’s ahead of Mitt Romney by two percentage points, which qualifies as being “dead even.”

This poll comes from the Behavior Research Center, which is notably the only polling outfit that’s shown an Obama lead in Arizona out of the eight companies that have polled here.

See also:
–Obama Winning Arizona: Not as Dumb of an Idea as People Thought
Obama Winning Arizona Sounds Like a Dumb Idea Again

According to the New York Times‘ Nate Silver, this polling company “has had good results in the past,” but he notes that “even a good polling firm can and will produce an outlying result or two with a sample size (500 people) like that.”

That said, Obama’s 42-40 lead over Romney includes 13 percent in the “not sure” category, and includes both Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson, and Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who polled at 3 percent and 2 percent, respectively.

In addition to Obama’s apparent lead, the Behavior Research Center poll shows Richard Carmona with a four-point lead over Congressman Jeff Flake in the U.S. Senate race. Since the margin of error is stated to be 4.4 percent, that’s not really a lead, either.

“Thus it must be concluded that Arizona is definitely a battleground state for both the Presidential and the U.S. Senate races and there can be little doubt but that the outcome will be largely dependent on which political party does the best job in turning out its voters and whether the Democrats can hang on to the Latino vote,” the pollsters’ release says.

Arizona Latinos favor Obama over Romney by 77 to 10 percent, according to these results.

The results also note that Obama’s up 46-39 in Maricopa County, and Carmona’s up 46-38 in the county.

Results from this poll can be found here, and all other presidential poll results in Arizona can be found here.