Americans give President Barack Obama mixed, but narrowly positive, ratings for his response in the aftermath of the fatal police shooting of a black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri, a new poll finds.
Forty-one percent of Americans say they're satisfied with Obama's performance, with 34 percent dissatisfied and the remaining quarter undecided, according to a CBS/New York Times survey released Thursday. In comparison, according to CBS, 46 percent of Americans were dissatisfied with President George H.W. Bush's response to the 1992 riots in Los Angeles.
Sixty percent of black Americans, but just 35 percent of white Americans, said they were satisfied with Obama's response in Ferguson.
The response from Gov. Jay Nixon (D) received a more negative rating than Obama's, with 32 percent satisfied, 34 percent dissatisfied and 34 percent unsure. Views of Nixon's actions also differ across racial lines: White Americans are about as likely to be satisfied as dissatisfied with his actions, while black Americans are nearly twice as likely to say his performance wasn't satisfactory as to say that it was. Opinions were split on his decision to bring in the National Guard, with 26 percent saying its presence was helping the situation, 20 percent that it was making things worse, and 33 percent that it was having little effect.
The CBS/Times poll was conducted Aug. 19-20, using live calls to landlines and cell phones to reach 1,025 Americans.
Other surveys also show profound racial differences in reactions to the shooting and protests in Ferguson. HuffPost/YouGov polling found that black Americans are far more likely to believe the shooting was part of a broader pattern in the way police treat black men and to say that they don't trust the justice system to fairly deal with police officers who shoot people. A Pew Research survey found that black Americans were more than twice as likely as whites to say the shooting raises racial issues, and that the police response has gone too far.
This post was updated with information on respondents' views of Gov. Jay Nixon's response.