Romney holds commanding lead in Missouri poll

◼ Romney is overwhelmingly likely to win the state’s 10 electoral votes next month. In The Star’s poll, the Republican leads the incumbent Democratic president by 13 points, 54-41 percent, well outside the poll’s margin of error. - Kansas City Star

Bonny Roney is sure of her vote.

“We can’t stand four more years of Obama,” the 64-year-old Gladstone woman said Friday, explaining her support for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. “If we don’t have a good economy, everything else is moot.”

Jim Carnahan, 69, of Nixa, is even more blunt. “Obama has been a total disaster to the economy of this country,” he said. “He is going to ruin this country and, I think, make the global economy fail within the next four years if we put him back in there.”

Both viewpoints appear to reflect the one certainty in 2012 Missouri politics: Romney is overwhelmingly likely to win the state’s 10 electoral votes next month. In The Star’s poll, the Republican leads the incumbent Democratic president by 13 points, 54-41 percent, well outside the poll’s margin of error.

“We need change,” said 46-year-old Michelle Cryderman of Harrisonville, who took part in the poll, as did the other voters quoted in this story. “The United States is in some serious trouble, and we need somebody to turn us around.”