Obama has 7-point edge over Romney in Pa.

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PHILADELPHIA, Aug. 25 (UPI) -- President Obama leads his likely Republican opponent Mitt Romney by a significant margin among Pennsylvania voters, a Philadelphia Inquirer poll indicated.

Fifty-one percent of voters said they prefer Obama and 42 percent said they support Romney, who is set to be officially nominated as the GOP presidential candidate next week during the Republican National Convention in Florida, results released Saturday indicated.

Seven percent said they were undecided.

The results are comparable to other recent polls, including one released Thursday by Muhlenberg College, which found Obama leading by 9 percentage points in the state.

Jeffrey Plaut of the Democratic polling firm Global Strategy Group, a polling partner, told the Inquirer the results could indicate Pennsylvania lost some of its status as a swing state.

He said Friday that Democrats would have to fail to turn out their base voters to "put the state in play."

Republican Adam Geller of National Research Inc., another survey partner, acknowledged that Romney was behind in the state but said Obama's lead could be less when factoring polls' margins of error and considering that undecided voters have a history of voting against incumbents.

While just about half of respondents said they approved of the job Obama has done, only about four in 10 respondents said they had a favorable view of Romney, results indicated.

Results are based on a telephone survey of 601 likely voters in Pennsylvania conducted Tuesday through Thursday. The margin of error is 4 percentage points.