US-Obama Approval: 46% Approve, 51% Disapprove (Democracy Corps/Resurgent Republic 10/2-3)

Democracy Corps (D) and Resurgent Republic (R)
10/2-3/10; 1,000 2008 voters, 3.1% margin of error
Mode: Live telephone interviews
Democracy Corps release

National

State of the Country
26% Right Direction, 65% Wrong Track (chart)

Obama Job Approval
46% Approve, 51% Disapprove (chart)

Favorable / Unfavorable
Barack Obama: 47 / 42 (chart)

Party ID
37% Democrat, 34% Republican, 28% independent (chart)

Democracy Corps:

I was polling then for President Bill Clinton and the poll findings today in this joint poll with Resurgent Republic look eerily similar. On election night, an identical two-thirds said the country is seriously off on the wrong track; an identical 45 percent said Clinton and Obama were moving the country in the right direction; and Clinton and Obama had almost identical favorability ratings - split evenly between favorable and unfavorable responses.

Resurgent Republic:

The 2010 mid-term election was a stunning rebuke to the Obama Administration and Democrats in Congress. Much of that rebuke was driven by Independents, who comprised 28 percent of the electorate and supported Republican congressional candidates by the overwhelming margin of 56 to 38 percent. That represents a dramatic 36-point turnaround from the last mid-term election in 2006, when Independents supported Democratic congressional candidates by 57 to 39 percent. Given that an equal percentage of Democrats and Republicans voted in 2010 (36 percent), these Independent voters clearly played a decisive role in the Republican gains.