We begin, as any self-respecting election poll must, with the horse race. In the days immediately following the political conventions, the people of America answered their telephones, entertained our questions, and informed us that this race was very, very close. True, Barack Obama led Mitt Romney by eleven points among the larger pool of registered voters, but when we narrowed it down to likely voters — 66 percent of our overall sample — the president's lead shrunk to four points, or, given the margin of error in our polling, nothing at all. But then something interesting happened when we shifted our attention from the race to the gamblers: Only 56 percent of registered, self-described Republican voters would bet on Romney to win compared with the 81 percent of registered, self-described Democratic voters who'd lay down for their guy. Fifty-six percent: Barely half of the GOP faithful picked him to win, even as 83 percent of them still planned to vote for him.

Why the difference in confidence? Why were Romney supporters so down on their guy even though unemployment hovered around 8.2 percent and no president since FDR has been reelected with an unemployment rate higher than 7.2 percent the month of the election? Why were they so gloomy even though the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson have signaled there was no check they wouldn't write to see Romney through to the White House? The answer, as we see time and again in our survey results, is simple: because the Republicans have Mitt, and the other side has Barack, and Mitt — well, Mitt just has a problem connecting to people.

It isn't a Mormon thing, as many had predicted during the dog days of the Republican primaries (see below); it's a money thing, and thanks to the tireless work of Davids Axelrod and Plouffe (with an assist from neighborhood gossip Harry Reid), money and its discontents — inequality, entitlement, the whole 1 percent — has become synonymous with Mitt Romney. To wit:

>Despite his wife's tales of tough times in her convention speech, Romney still can't convince the general population that he understands the basic economic issues facing American families as well as Obama. (When one compares the results of questions 9 and 10 in our survey and breaks them down by gender, geographic region, and age, Obama outpolls Romney across the board by double digits, except when he statistically ties him with Americans fifty and older.)

>Despite Romney's attempts to paint himself as a man who made it on his own, 85 percent of Americans believe he owes a lot or some of his success to his family's wealth and connections.

>Despite Romney's belief that "no one's ever asked to see [his] birth certificate," only 24 percent of Americans believe they have a lot or some in common with him compared with the 40 percent who see something of themselves in the skinny mixed-race guy from Hawaii.

Yet for all his problems connecting with people, Romney is still statistically tied with Obama among likely voters, which can be partly explained by demographics (older, wealthier voters are more likely to vote than younger, poorer voters, and they're more likely to vote Republican) and more fully explained by Obama's weakness when it comes to jobs. You may have heard Romney mention them — he and his surrogates have never missed a chance to use the words failed and Obama in the same breath. And if this were another president at another time, the constant drumbeat of failed, failure, failing might have been enough to propel Romney to an easy victory. (It worked for Bill Clinton, who unseated George H. W. Bush thanks to a unemployment rate of around 7.4 percent.) But our survey shows a few surprises:

>More Americans hold President George W. Bush responsible for the level of unemployment than they do Obama.

>Americans are statistically split on whether Obama has done as well as he could to create jobs or whether he's mismanaged the recovery.

>A majority of Americans say Romney's "failure" refrain is too harsh — men and women, whites and nonwhites, and from all geographic regions (even in the South, no friend to Obama).

None of this absolves Obama of responsibility for the jobs crisis — there are still those 45 percent of Americans who believe he's mismanaged it — but few outside the GOP faithful are ready to lay the blame squarely on him, either.

There are other issues at play, of course, and there are plenty of reasons for both sides to be hopeful and worried. But when you're looking at this poll and you're wondering why the hell this thing is so close, just remember what Obama pollster Joel Benenson told Esquire earlier this year: "Politically, we're a fifty-fifty country and have been for a while." What will tip the balance — Romney's disconnect or the most recent jobs report or perhaps something else hidden in these numbers — is something we'll soon find out.

RACE, RELIGION, AND THE BOMB THAT NEVER WENT OFF

Remember back in the hurly-burly days of the Republican primaries, when pundits and strategists predicted (off the record, of course) that Mitt Romney's Mormonism and his service to his religion (as a former bishop of the church who's tithed untold millions to Salt Lake City) would be a political liability with a general electorate? Well, it never happened. Nearly half of the people we surveyed don't think Mormon lifestyles are all that different from the rest of the country's, and even among the 38 percent of Americans who do see a difference, the overwhelming majority don't think the difference is better or worse — it's just different. What's more, only 13 percent of Americans say they know someone personally who wouldn't vote for Romney because of his religious beliefs, and that number doesn't shift much across age, income, geographic region, or religion. (Even the Evangelicals, with some of the famous in their flock having at one time or another called Mormonism a cult, show no collective disinclination toward it.) Barack Obama's race, however, remains somewhat stickier: 26 percent of Americans claim to know someone who wouldn't vote for the president because of his race, which on the surface would indicate that he faces greater prejudice (twice as much, actually) than Romney. However, when we take a closer look at the numbers, the highest number of reported cases of perceived racism come from self-described Democrats, people with postgraduate degrees, and nonwhites. These are the groups that tend to be the most sympathetic to Obama, and whether or not their perceptions of racism are grounded in fact or merely evidence of a heightened sensitivity to possible racism, it calls into question the numbers from the general population.

WHO CARES ABOUT MEDICARE AND OBAMACARE?

The funny thing about the Medicare issue is that it wasn't really an issue until Mitt Romney made it an issue by picking Paul Ryan as his running mate, and, as Romney's luck would have it, it turned out to be a stinker for him. When asked which administration would provide better Medicare coverage for themselves, a sick parent, or grandparent, Americans chose Obama by nineteen points, with the president outpolling his opponent among men and women, all education levels, all geographic regions (except for the South, where they're statistically tied), all age groups (except over fifty, where they're statistically tied), and all income levels (except $100,000-plus, where they're statistically tied). The country, however, remains deeply divided when it comes to the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, with equal numbers saying they'd be happy and unhappy if the ACA were repealed. (Even self-described independents are statistically tied on the issue.) What's most striking about these results isn't the intense opposition from Evangelicals (60 percent of whom would be happy to see it go) or white Protestants (51 percent, ditto), but the muted enthusiasm from the very constituencies it was created to help. People under thirty, many of whom can now stay on their parents' plans until they're twenty-six, and low-income Americans, many of whom will soon have access to affordable coverage through government subsidies and private-market exchanges, report the same levels of unhappiness with the ACA's possible repeal as the general population. (What's more, people under thirty are roughly twice as likely as any other group to say they don't even care about what happens with the ACA.) Chalk it up to poor salesmanship on Obama's part or the inherent difference between many Republicans' hatred of the ACA and many Democrats' mere appreciation of it, but it remains one of the most divisive issues in the country right now.

TRUTH, LIES, AND WHAT IT TAKES

One of the great mysteries about political debate these days is that you can call a man pretty much anything in public, but once you call him a liar, it's like you've killed his mother. The question, however, had to be asked, and in the matter of who's a bigger liar, the six-point difference between Romney (35 percent) and Obama (29 percent) is statistically not significant. However, significantly more people say Obama's ads have stuck to the truth (42 percent) than say the same about Romney's ads (30 percent), so between the two campaigns, let's give Romney the edge in the lying department. Now, we could lie ourselves and express outrage about the candidates' casual attitudes toward facts, but it turns out that two thirds of Americans don't expect their candidates to tell the truth all the time. (Look at Paul Ryan: Even having been flagged "mischaracterizing" everything from his votes to cut the military budget to his marathon time, Americans are evenly split on whether they like him more or less the more they learn about him.) And when that many voters expect a lie or two, what's to stop a man from lying?

THE FANTASY ELECTION LEAGUE

You'd be smart to bet on the old guys. Clinton beats Romney decisively — by thirty-five points — and Reagan bests Obama by fourteen points. But what's most telling is when you pit the two legends opposite each other: Clinton and Reagan are in a statistical tie, and they share many of the same strengths and weaknesses among americans as the current candidates. The biggest difference: Clinton has an eighteen-point lead over Romney among whites, compared with Obama, who's been running a deficit with them.

CLASS

First, you've got the candidate: a nine-figure millionaire to whom many Americans feel they cannot relate (74 percent of Americans say they have little or nothing in common with Romney) who also happens to be a second-generation politician whom 85 percent of Americans think got a lot or some help from his family's wealth and connections. (Compare that with the 54 percent of Americans who think Obama benefited a lot or some from affirmative-action programs.) As strongly as the far right of the Republican party has tried to paint Obama as the "other," it's Romney with whom most Americans can't identify.

Then you've got the sense among many in this country of economic unfairness — 44 percent of Americans think taxes on the wealthy ($250,000-plus households) are too low (with only 12 percent thinking they're too high and 28 percent thinking they're just right). Taken together, and with the Obama campaign's strong emphasis throughout the summer on Romney's tax returns and the president's plan to let the Bush tax cuts expire on the country's top earners, you have a situation that plays strongly to Obama's strengths: A majority of Americans think the poor would do better under Obama, while a majority think the wealthy would do better under Romney. The middle class? Neither man gets a clear majority, but Obama beats Romney by ten points.

METHODOLOGY

The Esquire/Yahoo! News poll was conducted by landline and cellular telephone September 7 to 10, 2012, among a random national sample of 1,002 adults. Results have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points for the full sample, 4.5 points for registered voters, and 5 points for likely voters. The survey was produced for Esquire/Yahoo! News by Langer Research Associates, with sampling, data collection, and tabulation by Interviewing Service of America of Van Nuys, California.

For the raw survey data, click here.

PLUS: More Detailed Results from the Esquire/Yahoo News! Poll >>

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