Poll finds 47 percent negative on Romney

WASHINGTON, Feb. 1 (UPI) -- A Harris Poll designed to tease out how U.S. voters actually feel about the candidates finds that almost half would be upset if Mitt Romney became president.

At 47 percent, the Republican former Massachusetts governor has higher negatives than either of the two remaining Democratic contenders. One-third of respondents said they would be upset or angry if Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., wins the election, while 30 percent said the same about his Senate colleague, Hillary Clinton of New York.

Harris Interactive worked with the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy at Brigham Young University to devise a method of getting at voters' true feelings. Instead of asking them directly whether they would vote for Obama, or for a black candidate, voters were given a list of propositions about things like athletes' salaries or high gas prices and asked how many made them upset or angry. A control group got only general questions, while other groups had one added on about a specific candidate.

The survey of 2,302 U.S. adults also found that 27 percent would be upset by a Mormon president, 25 percent by a woman and only 9 percent by a black.