No immediate boost for Romney after Ryan selection

Republican Mitt Romney received no immediate boost to his White House bid by naming US Representative Paul Ryan as vice-presidential running mate, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll.

Some 51% of those surveyed said the decision did not change their opinion of Romney, a former private-equity executive and Massachusetts governor who will face President Barack Obama in the Nov 6 election.

Another 26% in the online poll said they viewed Romney more favourably after he added the 42-year-old Wisconsin congressman to the ticket on Saturday, while 23% said they viewed him less favourably.

The survey of 508 registered voters was conducted for Reuters from Aug 11 to Aug 13.

Ryan is a polarising figure in Washington, where he has led his party’s push to cut domestic spending, lower taxes and scale back the size of the federal government as chairman of the House of Representatives Budget Committee.

A hero to conservatives, Ryan has given Romney a jolt of energy on the campaign trail. The two men basked in the cheers of thousands of supporters at campaign stops in North Carolina on Sunday.

But Ryan remains largely unknown to the wider public. While 80% of those surveyed said they had at least heard of Ryan, only 35% said they were familiar with him.

Some 42% said they did not know whether he was qualified or not to be president — a higher percentage than the 33% who said he was not qualified and the 26% who said he was.

One warning sign for the Romney campaign: by a margin of 44% to 29%, voters said the incumbent vice president, Joe Biden, was more qualified than Ryan to serve as president.

“He’s fairly unknown in who he is and what he stands for,” said Ipsos vice president Julia Clark. “He’s a Wisconsin congressman, not a nationally known figure.”

That is likely to change in the coming weeks as Ryan campaigns across the country to build enthusiasm among grassroots conservatives while Democrats attack his budget plan as one that would gut programmes for the elderly and the poor.

Ryan’s signature proposal would change the popular Medicare health plan for the elderly into a voucher programme that would give future retirees a fixed amount of money to buy traditional Medicare insurance or competing private plans.

Ryan says that approach would rein in spiralling medical costs that threaten the programme’s solvency in coming decades. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that one version of Ryan’s plan, passed by the House last year, would increase retirees’ out-of-pocket medical costs by about $6,400 annually.

Democrats argue that the plan would end guaranteed medical coverage for seniors and have made it a centrepiece of their effort to win back control of the House.

In his first public reaction to Romney’s VP pick, Obama called Ryan the “ideological leader” of the Republican party.