Three in four Americans feel little or no personal connection to Romney, Esquire/Yahoo poll finds

[link to news.yahoo.com]

Three in four Americans feel they have little or nothing in common with Mitt Romney, while nearly 60 percent feel the same way about President Barack Obama, according to an Esquire/Yahoo! News poll.

In the wake of Romney's remarks dismissing nearly half of Americans as self-identified victims who are dependent on government—videotaped at a donor event earlier this year and posted online this week by Mother Jones magazine—these new numbers are more bad news for a candidate struggling to connect with ordinary Americans. The margin of error for the survey, conducted shortly after the two national political conventions, is plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Further complicating the Republican ticket's image problem is that a Romney presidency is viewed as significantly more beneficial to wealthy Americans than a second Obama term would be. Sixty-two percent of those surveyed said the wealthy would be better off under Romney than Obama. That split reverses when Americans were asked who would benefit the poor: 57 percent say Obama, 30 percent say Romney.