July 25, 2011

Obama Poll Numbers Plummet

With the nation in the throes of a debt ceiling crisis which has all but put a fork in President Obama’s disastrous tenure as United States chief executive, Mr. Obama’s poll numbers continue to plummet. The short-lived upward spike in the President’s approval numbers in the wake of the Osama bin Laden killing and Mr. Obama’s subsequent victory lap has now flattened, and Rasmussen, Gallup et al. again reflect a nation deeply dissatisfied with Mr. Obama’s job performance.

Today’s RealClearPolitics poll summary reflects a whole lot of red, a color appropriate for an administration which has brought us, among other things, annual deficits of $1.5 trillion, a 9.2% unemployment rate, 0.4% and 1.3% quarterly GDP, a $787 billion failed stimulus, Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, and a general regulatory assault on American prosperity.

Here are today’s RealClearPolitics numbers:

Note that even CNN has a -9% approval rating for the President. In fact, CNN was so embarrassed by its own polling numbers that it felt compelled to issue an email blast explaining the results. Rather than simply reporting the facts or suggesting that the poll results might indicate general dissatisfaction with the President’s job performance, CNN rationalized that Mr. Obama’s poor numbers reflect liberal discontent that the most liberal president in our nation’s history is just not liberal enough. CNN’s release reads: “President Obama’s approval rating falls to 45%, driven in part by dissatisfaction from the left with Obama’s track record, a new CNN/ORC International poll released today suggests. The new poll shows that 38% disapprove of Obama because he has been too liberal, but 13% percent say he has not been liberal enough, nearly double those who felt that way in May. His approval rating among liberals is at 71%, an all-time low for his presidency.”

CNN adds begrudgingly, “Overall, those who disapprove of Obama is at 54%, tying an all-time low hit just before November’s midterm elections.” Clearly not good news for the President.

But, to CNN and the rest of the liberal media, the Obama presidency glass is always half-full. Seeking equivalency to balance out the President’s demonstrably bad news (and it’s not too easy with numbers like these), CNN cites the public’s rising dissatisfaction with the Republican party. Always fair and balanced when it comes to trying to negate bad news about its champion, CNN reports: “Poll respondents’ negative opinions weren’t reserved just for the president, though — 55% of all Americans have an unfavorable view of the Republican Party, a 7-point increase since March. And only 37% feel the GOP’s policies would move the country in the right direction, a 9-point drop since the start of the year.”

Not quite the equivalent of -9% approval deficit for the President, but you have to appreciate CNN’s effort to put a smiley face on the dire-for-Dems report.

But how about the public’s views of the Democrat party and whether poll respondents feel that the Democrats’ policies are moving the country in the right direction? The CNN email blast does not mention these results. When you look at the raw polling data, however, you find a 43% right direction/53% wrong direction split for the Democrats — a little better than the Republican numbers (very little when you factor in the margin of error), but still no great shakes.

Further morsels lay buried in the CNN poll results, information that CNN did not choose to highlight in its email. The results show a 43% approval to 32% disapproval for Speaker of the House John Boehner, who has been squaring off against the President in the debt ceiling negotiations (a +11 compared to the President’s -9, for a whopping 20 point differential). And, of course, CNN makes no mention of the numbers for Democrat House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (35% favorable to 52% unfavorable) or Democrat Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (29% favorable to 37% unfavorable). It seems that these abysmal numbers for the spendthrift triumvirate of Obama, Pelosi and Reid are inconsistent with the media’s speaking points that the Democrat leadership has steered the American people to its side of the debt ceiling debate.

The CNN poll indicates that the results are based on telephone interviews with a sample of 1,009 adult Americans, although there is no breakdown of the proportion of those interviewed who identify themselves as Democrat, Republican or Independent. It is difficult to speculate given the limited sample information in the poll results, but based on the tendency of prior polls to sample more Democrats than Republicans (in the case of the New York Times and Washington Post, they seem to poll only respondents working in their respective newsrooms), it seems likely that the CNN poll population leans Democrat.

All the more reason for the President and his political handlers to be worried.

No related posts.