As for President Obama, 51% say he is fit for the job. However, 44% say he is not qualified to be president, even though he has now served 17 months in the job.

Nearly as many (49%) say former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, an unsuccessful candidate for the GOP presidential nomination in 2008, is qualified to be president of the United States. Thirty-two percent (32%) say Romney is not qualified, but another 20% are not sure.

Just 35% of voters say former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is qualified to be the nation’s chief executive. Nearly half (48%) say Gingrich is not fit for the office. Seventeen percent (17%) are undecided.

As for Sarah Palin, ex-governor of Alaska and the 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee, only 26% feel she is qualified to be president, but 61% do not. Thirteen percent (13%) are not sure.

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The survey of 1,000 Likely U.S. Voters was conducted on June 17-18, 2010 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/-3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Male voters rate Romney and Clinton first and virtual equals in terms of qualifications. Female voters see Clinton first, Obama second.

Younger voters put Obama well ahead of the others.

The partisan differences are predictable. Sixty-eight percent (68%) of GOP voters rate Romney as qualified to be president, followed by 53% who say the same of Gingrich. Republican voters are evenly divided over whether Palin is fit to be president. But they view all three Republicans as more qualified than Clinton or Obama.

Nearly 80% of Democrats, on the other hand, view Obama and Clinton as qualified, but they overwhelmingly believe that Gingrich and Palin are not. Democrats are more closely divided over Romney’s qualifications.

Perhaps most telling are the responses of voters not affiliated with either major party. Sixty-one percent (61%) say Clinton is qualified for the White House, and a plurality (48%) say the same of Obama and Romney. Gingrich is a close call for unaffiliateds, but by better than two-to-one, they say Palin is not fit to be president.

Sixty-four percent (64%) of all voters say it is at least somewhat likely that the next president will be a Republican, with 40% who say it is Very Likely. But it’s important to note that the question does not say whether this president will be elected in 2012 or 2016.

Fifty-eight percent (58%) have a favorable opinion of Clinton, while 41% view her unfavorably.

Late last October, 27% of voters said Clinton would be doing a better job as president if she had been elected instead of Obama. Fourteen percent (14%) said she would be doing worse, and 49% said the two would be performing about the same.

According to the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll today, 46% of voters nationwide say they at least somewhat approve of Obama’s performance. Fifty-three percent (53%) disapprove.

Seventy-two percent (72%) of Republican voters continue to believe that GOP members of Congress have lost touch with the party base throughout the nation over the past several years. By contrast, 61% of Democratic voters think their representatives in Congress have done a good job of representing Democratic values over the past several years.

Fifty-nine percent (59%) of GOP voters believes Palin shares the values of most GOP voters throughout the nation.

Romney has consistently run stronger than Gingrich and Palin among both Republicans and voters in general in surveys over the past year.