This week’s impreMedia-Latino Decisions tracking poll found slight gains for presidential candidate Mitt Romney in battleground states with 33% certain to or thinking about voting for him. However, the over national polling data shows the strongest week to date for President Obama and the Democrats, with noticeable gains over last week’s poll. [Full wave 6 results here | impreMedia Voto2012 ]

Fifty-one percent of Latino voters in ten battleground states said they trust Obama and the Democrats more to make the right decisions and improve economic conditions, compared to 27% for Romney and Republicans. When combined with voters in non-battleground states, the numbers jumped to 72% and 20% respectively, a significant increase from 4 weeks ago when overall 59% said they trusted Obama and Democrats more versus 30% for Romney and Republicans to fix the economy.

The economy continued to dominate voter’s concerns, with 59% in battleground states and 56% overall listing “Create more jobs / Fix the economy” as their top issue, and immigration reform is listed as the second most important issue.

“Beyond immigration, which continues to be a very important issue, Obama has now opened up a very large lead on trust to rebuild the economy among Latinos,” said Matt Barreto of Latino Decisions. “While Republicans had hoped the weak economy would provide an opening to win over Latinos, almost three-fourths of Latinos say they have more confidence in Obama to fix the economy. Romney’s infamous comments about the ’47 percent’ are clearly hurting him among Latinos. He appears out of touch with the average working class family,” added Barreto.

Core support for Romney among Latino voters also continues to be problematic, with just 10% of respondents saying they had a “very favorable” opinion of Romney, compared to 55% for Obama. “Is Romney out of the race? No, but he is definitely in trouble among Latino voters,” said Monica Lozano, CEO of impreMedia. “Obama has consistently gained ground among Latinos on a week over week basis, and while Romney’s support is higher in key battleground states than elsewhere, it may be too late to close the gap.”

The ImpreMedia – Latino Decisions tracking poll puts Obama ahead with 73% overall to vote for him and 21% for Romney. In the battleground states Obama gets 61% of the voters versus 33% for Romney, with Florida respondents comprising a significant share of Latinos in battleground states.

Democrats in general also saw increased support, with 64% of respondents overall saying they were doing a good job of reaching out to Hispanics / Latinos, an increase of 5% from last week’s polling. On the same question 15% of respondents said the Republicans were doing a good job. In battleground states 47% felt Democrats were doing a good job vs. 17% for Republicans.

Also this week, the poll asked Latino voters about two competing views on Medicare reform, without cueing candidates or parties. When it comes to Medicare, 71% of Latino voters agreed the government needs to protect Medicare so health insurance is always there for people over 65, even if it means increasing government spending. In contrast, only 17% of Latinos agreed that the government should reduce or cap government spending on Medicare by providing opportunities for people to buy private insurance.

The battleground results represent the first polling data among Latinos across all battleground states issued in 2012. impreMedia/Latino Decisions tracking poll will release a second wave of battleground results from their October polling data in future weeks.

To view more data and information on this week’s poll visit: www.laopinion.com/section/voto. Follow the impreMedia-Latino Decisions Tracking Poll results on twitter with #IMLDPOLLS

METHODOLOGY

This is the sixth release of an 11-week tracking poll of Latino registered voters. Each week impreMedia and Latino Decisions will release a new rolling cross-section of 300 completed interviews with Latino registered voters across all 50 states. Battleground interviewers are combined across all six weeks and are 267 completed interviews, with Florida accounting for the largest share of battleground states The ten battleground states are AZ, CO, FL, IA, MO, NC, NH, NV, OH, VA. Interviews are conducted in English or Spanish, at the preference of the respondent, all conducted by bilingual interviewers at Latino Decisions calling center, Pacific Market Research. The survey averaged 10 minutes in length, and has an overall margin of error of 5.6% on results that approach a 50/50 distribution. All respondents confirm that they are Hispanic or Latino and currently registered to vote. This sixth week of the survey was fielded Sept 21-Sept 27, 2012