Obama's approval ratings decline continues
Pres. Obama's approval rating is down 10 percentage points over four months. The decline has been steady and across all groups. (For example, while Democrats are still much more favorable to Obama than Republicans, the decline has been almost equal in percentage points within each partisan group. Independents too. Some numbers on that just below.)
According to the Pew Research Center, the portion of Americans who said they approve of the way Obama is performing his job has dropped from 62 percent in April to 52 percent in late August while disapproval has increased from 26 to 37 percent.
Pollster.com, which aggregates polls from many sources, shows Obama with an average approval/disapproval of 50.9/43.9. I know of no reason to assume that it has bottomed out. If you look at this graphic from pollster.com the lines do appear to be flattening slightly (meaning a possible halt to the Obama slide) but more data would be needed to reach that conclusion.
Polysci superguru Larry Jacobs says that Obama could be at a "tipping point," meaning that one possibility is that his standing with the public falls seriously off a cliff in the period just ahead.
The above 60 percent approval rate that Obama maintained during the first months of his term was very high and surprisingly stable for those roughly four months, Jacobs said. That makes the descent to the low 50s look sharper, but such a rating by itself is not cataclysmic, he said. Pres. Bush (II) had similar numbers during his first year until the rally-round-the-prez effect after the 9/11 attacks sent Bush's ratings into the stratosphere.
But approval ratings of barely 50 percent (below that in a few of the polls aggregated by Pollster.com) are not good, even if they are not unprecedented. Jacobs said that political science circles, Obama's sagging popularity are taken to be "impersonal," meaning they don't have much to do with anything Obama is saying or doing and more to do with the fact that the economy is so bad. Jacobs said the health care debate that dominates the news "isn't helping" Obama, but the main thing dragging him down is the economy.
Obama still has a plurality of approvers among independents (in the Pew August numbers its 48/40). The big sign that Obama's ratings are falling off the cliff will be that the independents are abandoning him, Jacobs said.
Below is the email from Andrew Kohut of Pew that set me off on this post, and there's a link at the bottom of it to the details of Pew's April and August approval ratings for Obama in more detail (if you click through to that table, and look at the last column which shows the April-august change by group, you'll be impressed with consistent the level of decline is across the groups):
In April, 62% of the public approved of Barack Obama's performance as president and 26% disapproved. In August, just four months later, 52% approved of Obama's job performance while 37% disapproved.
Obama's approval rating has declined across nearly all major demographic and political groups: It has fallen 11 points among women and nine points among men; by 12 points among Republicans, 10 points among Democrats and nine points among independents.
For a detailed breakdown of the changes in Obama’s job approval ratings, based on 3,013 interviews in April and 4,013 interviews in August by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, click here.
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Comments (5)
I can tell you why Obama's approval rating has declined, aside from the relentless and ridiculous attacks in the conservative media.
It's declining among Democrats and people farther left because of their deep disappointment.
No matter what Rush and O'Reilly and Sean and the KTLK gang say, Obama is so NOT a Socialist, and anyone who thinks so is just revealing their ignorance about what an actual Socialist would have done.
Here's what an actual Socialist president would have done: Let the banks fail and auctioned their assets off to reimburse depositors, re-instituted all the Depression-era banking and securities laws, immediately withdrawn all troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and put them to work rebuilding New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, instituted either a single-payer (Canadian-style) or nationalized (British-style) health care system, put the unemployed to work repairing and upgrading the nation's infrastructure, and a host of other initiatives.
Now I'm not ashamed--in fact I'm proud--to say that I'm a pink-and-green-tinged Democrat, and I never liked Obama. I knew the fix was in when the mass media began acting as if Obama and H. Clinton were the only candidates for the Democratic nomination early in 2007, even though several others were still in the race.
Hearing Obama speak, I saw someone who had the oratory and the mannerisms of a leftist populist, but actually said nothing substantive in his speeches. (No, I am not a disgruntled H. Clinton supporter. I didn't like her, either.)
Yet Americans were so hungry for change that they fell for the fake radical. I thought it was great that enough Americans had overcome their racial prejudice to vote for a man of partly African heritage, but otherwise I expected only minor changes around the edges of the status quo.
Since assuming office, Obama has put more troops into Afghanistan, acted as if his main job was to please the Republicans, staffed his Cabinet with centrists and right-wingers, bailed out the financial institutions with no preconditions, and continued extraordinary rendition and signing statements. Despite what the right-wing media say, more and more Democrats are wondering where all that "change" went.
I never expected much real change from Obama. If Bush was driving the country off a cliff at 60 mph, then I expected Obama to slow down to 30mph without veering away from the cliff. Instead, he seems to be slowing down to no more than 50 mph, and that's what is angering Democrats.
Karen, I respectfully disagree with your analysis. You're probably correct about a portion of the population, but I doubt that is troubling independents very much. Conservatives were (of course) going to dislike him. They disagree with his policies.
My guess, and I could certainly be projecting, is that a big portion of this has to do with the sheer amount of money spent in the last 12 months. We've seen hasty bailouts, overpromised stimulus packages, enormous energy plans and now an overhaul of the health care system. Little of it has seemed well thought out. And the deficit numbers are really, really growing. I think this has spooked lots people.
My honest guess is that Obama could really use a few months with no new big policy proposals.
It's Saturday, and we're getting ready to hit the fair, so I don't have the time to verify my suspicions.
Does anyone know if there has been a President that has tanked as quickly as Barack Obama?
It seems to me that even Jimmy Carter held on to the esteem of the American public longer than Obama has.
Perhaps people really can tell the difference between heartfelt populism and grasping Socialism.
The crime get solved by the end of the hour. We get grumpy if it gets "continued" to the next installment. Patience is no virtue anymore.
The ads promise instant nirvana if we will only buy that product. We BELIEVE it, at least to the point of buying it for many viewers.
We expect instant promotions and pay raises, and get down at the prospect of being "stuck" in even a decent job.
We max out our credit cards to have NOW the things that we want, no matter the interest rate.
We buy the house our folks would have worked years to afford, expecting its value to rise each year till we sell it off at a profit.
And we expect our politicians -- who promise change that will make our health care cheap and wonderful, a green world where no environmental problems remain, and an economy where anyone who wants it will have a great job with good pay (preferably without too much work required)-- to produce all their promises in the blink of an eye.
And when reality hits, with rising joblessness, wrangling over health care, big deficits or tax increases on the horizon, and no early end in sight, we become discontented. We wanted it all to happen by the end of the first episode.
In time, what can actually happen will happen, and what cannot will fade. There will be disappointments and celebrations. And, one hopes, the American public will grow up a little, and not have the hopes and expectations of a five year old.
Right now, I agree, "It's the economy, stupid!"
Yes, Karen S., and America would be much better off now and in the future.
No to those who say it's because he's spent too much money.
He's spending to rebuild the economy, address global warming(although Congress seems too weak to make polluters really shape up) and health care (although the assignment of Blue Dogs and Republicans to come up with a Senate Finance plan and his/their refusal to allow anyone at the table who reflects the view of 65 or more of the population that a single-payer system WOULD solve our problem while the current legislation will not - as its model in Massachusetts does not - is extremely disappointing and has lost him support).