Most voters think President Obama has a good shot at being reelected next year, even if he continues to pursue tax increases as part of any future deficit reduction plan.

Fifty-four percent (54%) of Likely U.S. Voters feel the president is at least somewhat likely to be reelected in 2012. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 40% disagree and think the president’s reelection is unlikely.

Those figures include 26% who say he is Very Likely to be re-elected and 18% who believe it’s Not At All Likely. (To see survey question wording, click here.) Most voters are less certain.

Voters are narrowly divided as to whether the president will help or hurt his chances by calling for a balanced approach to deficit reduction and insisting that half the reduction comes from increasing taxes on corporations and the wealthy. Forty-one percent (41%) say it will help his chances while 38% think it will hurt. Eleven percent (11%) say it will have no impact. Government employees are much more likely than those who work in the private sector to think the president’s chances for reelection will be helped by his call for a balanced approach to deficit reduction.

Predictably, most Democrats (83%) think the president is likely to be reelected, while the majority (68%) of Republicans don’t. But voters not affiliated with either major party – by a 52% to 41% margin – also think Obama’s releection is likely.

The president again this week loses to a generic Republican candidate in a hypothetical 2012 election matchup. The president has now trailed the GOP candidate in 10 of 13 surveys conducted weekly since early May.

But when he faces a named Republican candidate, the president is generally ahead. Obama continues to earn between 41% and 49% of the vote no matter which Republican is mentioned as a potential opponent. This suggests that the race remains a referendum on the incumbent more than anything else.

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The national telephone survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on August 3-4, 2011 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC.See methodology.