WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama’s declaration of support for gay marriage may have prompted some Americans, especially blacks and Hispanics, to reconsider their opposition to letting homosexuals wed, an analysis of Reuters/Ipsos online poll data showed on Friday.

On May 9, Obama became the first U.S. president to say he believed same-sex couples should be allowed to get married.

His position was hailed by Democrats, gay rights groups and others as a benchmark for civil rights in the United States and criticized by Republican activists and conservative Christian leaders as a divisive campaign issue before the November 6 election.

The poll data found that African-Americans in particular were less likely to oppose gay marriage after Obama’s announcement than before. Before May 9, 34 percent of blacks opposed gay marriage. Afterward, 23 percent did.

The poll asked participants whether they opposed gay marriage, supported same-sex civil unions, supported gay marriage or were unsure.

Lower opposition by black Americans did not translate into support for gay marriage, according to the data.

Support by African-Americans for civil unions rose by 9 percentage points to 28 percent after Obama spoke, but support for gay marriage slipped by 2 points to 29 percent from 31 percent, and the percentage of African-Americans who were unsure rose 5 points to 21 percent.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Most Americans, no matter what their political party, believe there is too much money in politics and reject the idea that people should be allowed to spend what they want, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed on Thursday.

Seventy-five percent of Americans feel there is too much money in politics, and only 25 percent feel there is an intrinsic right to unfettered election spending, an argument commonly used by opponents of controls on campaign finance.

Almost the same proportion – 76 percent – feel that the amount of money in elections has given rich people more influence than other Americans, the online survey found.

“What we’re essentially seeing is Americans are fed up with the system and they think all the money in the system is not fair and they don’t like it,” said Chris Jackson, research director at Ipsos public affairs.

The poll was taken on May 22-24, with campaigning for the November 6 general election contest between President Barack Obama and presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney well under way.

This year’s U.S. elections are expected to be the most expensive ever – with billions of dollars raised and spent on national, state and local races. In April alone, the Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee raised $43.6 million, while Romney took in $40.1 million for his campaign and the Republican National Committee.

Many past controls on campaign spending have been lifted thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision, which ruled that corporate and labor union spending in elections is protected free speech.

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Virginia (Reuters) – Virginia’s Tim Kaine was one of the first state governors to endorse Barack Obama for president in 2008, he worked with Obama as head of the Democratic National Committee, and he is still one of the president’s leading supporters.

So, which fellow Democrat has been co-starring with Kaine in his U.S. Senate race? Not the president, but former Virginia Governor Mark Warner.

The fight for Virginia’s open Senate seat should be one of the tightest of the 33 up for grabs in the November 6 election. Most polls predict a dead heat between Kaine and George Allen, a former Republican governor who once held the seat.

It is also one of the most important, in a state that was reliably Republican for two generations until Obama captured it by 7 percentage points four years ago.

This time, the Virginia Senate race is perhaps more than anything a referendum on Obama. It will test whether his ability in 2008 to expand Democratic territory into states like Virginia, North Carolina and Indiana was more than a one-time blip in the electoral landscape.

“It’s a pure coat-tail race,” said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. “The winner of the presidential contest will also pick up the Senate seat.”

Kaine has treated the issue delicately, acknowledging policy differences with Obama. He has toured the state with Warner, a long-time friend who preceded him as governor, and appears with him on his Facebook page, the two casting themselves as symbols of an uprising of moderates that reflects Virginia’s changing demographics.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign on Monday stepped up its criticism of Mitt Romney for cutting jobs when he was a business executive, despite a warning from a leading Obama supporter that the attacks have gone too far.

The Obama camp launched an ad featuring former workers at an office supplies business that went bankrupt after Republican candidate Romney’s Bain Capital took it over in the mid-1990s.

Opponents, and even Cory Booker, the Democratic mayor of Newark, New Jersey, complained that the attacks on Romney’s record at private equity firm Bain could undermine free enterprise.

Obama was forced to defend the anti-Romney strategy when he was asked about it at a news conference after a NATO summit in Chicago.

“The reason this is relevant to the campaign is because my opponent, Governor Romney, his main calling card for why he thinks he should be president is his business experience,” Obama said. He said his campaign was not attacking private equity businesses in general.

“I think my view of private equity is that it is – it is set up to maximize profits and that’s a healthy part of the free market,” Obama said.

Monday’s Obama campaign ad of nearly six minutes is set in Marion, Indiana, a swing state that Obama narrowly won in 2008. It mixes news coverage of bankruptcy at SCM Office Supplies, where 350 workers lost their jobs, with testimony from fired workers.

May 18 (Reuters) – Is Mitt Romney an out-of-touch elitist and bully who led a rapacious business that killed common folks’ jobs?

That portrayal of the presumptive Republican presidential candidate is the most frequent one painted by President Barack Obama’s campaign and its allies, but their line of attack has yet to hit home.

The former Massachusetts governor is rising in the polls, including a Gallup survey this week that showed 50 percent of Americans now have a favorable opinion of him, the highest yet.

Part of that may be due to a honeymoon effect for Romney as Republicans rally now that he has effectively clinched the party’s nomination.

It could also be a sign that Democrats’ attacks on him for cutting blue-collar jobs when he was head of the Bain Capital private equity firm have not resonated with voters as much as they had hoped.

“To some extent, Romney’s been inoculated against them,” said Republican strategist Matt Mackowiak.

A Fox News poll this week that showed Obama leading Romney overall nevertheless put the Republican ahead on handling of the U.S. economy and creating new jobs.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – For President Barack Obama’s re-election team, it’s sort of like threading a needle.

While trying to define Republican Mitt Romney as an insensitive job-killer during his time as a private equity executive, the Obama campaign also is raising money from private equity executives on Wall Street – and hoping voters don’t see that as hypocritical.

The Obama campaign’s political dexterity was evident on Monday, as it released a blistering video ad recounting how Romney’s Bain Capital laid off 750 workers from a steel mill in Missouri. Hours later, the campaign raked in about $2 million at a Manhattan fundraiser held by Tony James, president of the Blackstone Group, a huge private equity firm.

The Blackstone Group had been on the Obama campaign’s radar before – as a target for criticism.

Last month, the campaign identified a Blackstone partner, Paul Schorr, as one of “eight wealthy individuals” who donated to Romney’s campaign after “betting against America” in “less-than-reputable” deals that led to outsourcing and layoffs.

So on Tuesday at the White House, Obama spokesman Jay Carney faced several questions about whether the president’s campaign was setting a double standard in dealing with Wall Street, where some executives see Obama as anti-business.

Carney rejected the notion that Obama’s team, in criticizing Romney and Republican donors in private equity, had been critical only of executives who had not contributed to Obama’s campaign and that only those who support the president were “totally kosher,” in the words of ABC’s Jake Tapper.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A well-funded U.S. non-profit group using the Internet to find a centrist candidate to run for president said on Tuesday it had failed to generate enough interest in any one nominee.

The group, Americans Elect, was creating a third party in which voters were to choose someone challenge Democratic President Barack Obama and presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney in the November election.

The group qualified to get its candidates onto the ballot in 27 states in November and raised millions of dollars, prompting concern among some Republicans and Democrats that it could affect the outcome in what is expected to be a close election.

Americans Elect Chief Executive Kahlil Byrd said no candidate had received enough support by a deadline of midnight on Monday to enter its “online convention” in June.

He left the door open for the group to continue seeking a candidate. “There is, however, an almost universal desire among delegates, leadership and millions of Americans who have supported AE to see a credible candidate emerge from this process,” Byrd said in a statement.

Third party candidates have not come close to winning U.S. presidential elections, but they have affected them.

The only two incumbent presidents who have failed to be re-elected in the past 32 years were Democrat Jimmy Carter and Republican George H.W. Bush, both when third-party candidates won a significant number votes.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Tim Kaine, a Democratic candidate for Senate and one of President Barack Obama’s closest allies, met with reporters on Tuesday to discuss politics nationally and in his home state, Virginia.

And here’s what everyone wanted to know: What do you, Tim Kaine, think about gay marriage?

Thus began an inquiry in which a clearly uncomfortable Kaine, a former Roman Catholic missionary, crossed his arms and, while carefully avoiding an endorsement of same-sex marriage, stressed that “I believe in the legal equality of relationships.”

The scene reflected how Democratic candidates and office-holders are being drawn into the political hornets’ nest that Vice President Joe Biden created on Sunday when he endorsed the right of same-sex couples to wed.

Biden’s comments on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program drew attention to Obama’s carefully crafted position of supporting gay rights but not same-sex marriage. That has put the president to the right of most Democrats – and most of the nation, recent polls suggest – on the politically divisive issue.

In an election year in which Obama, Kaine and other Democrats are battling conservative Republicans for the attention of independent voters, Biden’s remarks have spawned a not-so-welcome barrage of questions for leading Democrats.

For now, it appears that prominent Democrats who campaign or give interviews should expect to be asked about gay marriage.