Another Dismal August
For President Obama, August is indeed the cruelest month.
In 2009, the president ended his "honeymoon" period with the public, with the largest one-month drop in his job approval poll numbers he has ever experienced. In 2010, Obama hit an all-time low for monthly approval numbers. This would be followed, within the next two months, by his lowest daily approval average and his highest daily disapproval average.
This August, President Obama set new all-time lows in approval and all-time highs in disapproval, across the board.
August just isn't a very good month for Obama. There's simply no other way to state how dismal Obama's poll numbers were last month. A quick look at the new chart shows this plainly.
[Click on graph to see larger-scale version.]
August, 2011
There is almost always a lag time between events in the political world and when such events show up in the public's opinion. This lag time is usually roughly around one week. President Obama started August off with this wave of disapproval of the public towards all things Washington, after the bruising debt ceiling debate in Congress, which ended right at the end of July.
The president might have weathered this and climbed back, since the public was much more inclined to blame both Congress and the Republicans than Obama himself for the fiasco (if you think Obama's poll numbers are bad, you should see how low Congress is polling these days). Obama, as I said, might have emerged from the fight in better shape than he did, but within a week's time the debt ceiling brouhaha was followed by Standard and Poor's downgrade of America's creditworthiness. Aftershocks were felt throughout the financial system as result, and the stock market fluctuated wildly for weeks to come. This was reflected in the opinion polling.
Toss an East Coast earthquake and a New England hurricane into the mix, and August was pretty much a disaster all around. For August, Obama averaged 43.8 percent job approval and 50.7 percent disapproval. Among other records he set this month, this is the widest "underwater" gap he's ever posted, with a spread of 6.9 percent.
Overall Trends
The overall trends were mostly bad, as should be pretty obvious. To put this into clearer perspective, take a look at the three Augusts Obama has so far endured:
[Click on graph to see larger-scale version.]
Each, in their own way, has been brutal, but this year's has been particularly damaging to Obama's standing with the public. Obama started the month a full point worse in daily approval from last month's average, and then his numbers took a turn for the even-worse. When the credit downgrade hit the news, Obama's approval number sank roughly another full point, to the 43-44 percent range. The only shred of good news for Obama this month is that things didn't get worse from there. From August 9th to the end of the month, Obama stayed within this range in his daily approval average, but he ended the month on a down note, at exactly 43.0 percent. This marks the lowest daily approval rate he's ever posted, breaking the old record of 44.2 percent set on 10/17/10. For the month, Obama's monthly average fell 2.4 percent to hit the all-time monthly low of 43.8 percent, which breaks the old mark of 45.3 percent, which he set exactly one year ago.
Obama's disapproval numbers were nothing to write home about, either. His daily disapproval started off the month right around 50 percent, 2.2 points higher than his previous monthly average. Once the downgrade hit the news, Obama's numbers went north of 50 percent for the rest of the month, but -- like his daily approval average -- his daily disapproval average didn't fluctuate much from this new high, and stayed between 50 and 51 percent for most of the rest of the month. At the very end of the month, one particular poll (Gallup) dragged Obama's disapproval even higher -- but this is quite likely a statistical aberration of sorts. While Gallup's approval number for Obama briefly made the news by hitting a low of 38 percent (a worryingly-low number for any incumbent president), the other pollsters (even the Republican-leaning ones) had him much higher, in the low 40s. Gallup, in the last week or so, has bounced back to the same range as everyone else, so Obama's truly dismal disapproval numbers for the last week in August will likely bounce back a bit next month. But Obama did end the month at 53.2 percent -- an all-time high for a daily disapproval number. This is up two full points from the 51.2 percent mark he hit on 9/26/10. For the month, Obama's average wound up at 50.7 percent disapproval, one full point above the 49.7 monthly all-time high he posted in September of 2010, and almost three full points worse than Obama just posted in July.
In terms of overall trends, Obama's number seem to be flattening out, or perhaps "bottoming out" at a new level. This new level, however, is decidedly lower than he's ever experienced. What should be particularly worrisome for Obama fans is the fact that Obama doesn't have much of a track record of recovering, post-August. In both previous cases, Obama's best was to hold his numbers exactly where they ended August for the following few months. If Obama follows this pattern this year, he is going to be in pretty ominous territory heading into an election.
When I first began this column, I pointed out the ranges of public job approval for presidents:
The rule of thumb in approval polling goes something like this: anything over 60 percent is gold; 55-60 percent is excellent, but watch the trendlines carefully; 50-55 percent is good, but the closer to 50 the more worrisome; 45-50 is a warning sign of slipping support, 40-45 is dangerously close to falling off a cliff; and anything below 40 percent is "Nixon/Dubya" territory.
Obama has, so far, spent his entire post-honeymoon period in the 45-55 percent range. He fell below 50 percent in December of 2009, and only broke through this barrier again briefly, when Osama Bin Laden was killed earlier this year. But Obama has now entered into that dangerous region of 40-45 percent approval, and (if you believed Gallup a few weeks ago) even touched briefly into the "under 40 percent" range. Which is dangerous territory indeed, entering into a presidential campaign, because it shows that Obama is losing support not among his hardcore opponents, but among the independents and Democrats who elected him the first time around.
Can Obama recover? Anything is possible in politics. Will he recover? The first big test of this will come later this week, when Obama gives a speech on jobs to the assembled joint houses of Congress. Will Americans positively react to this speech, or will they forget about it when the first NFL game kicks off right after Obama speaks? This remains to be seen. But the Republican primary campaign will be heating up all month long, with debates and lots more media attention, and this could either help or harm Obama in the polls (depending on how it all plays out). If Obama launches his second-term campaign successfully this Thursday, and convinces the American people that his ideas to fix the economy are the best -- and if he truly gets the people to react and phone up their Congresscritters in support of the Obama Jobs Plan -- then maybe Obama can turn things around in September. The trendlines are murky at best, and disastrous at worst, so that's where we're going to have to leave it until next month.
[Obama Poll Watch Data:]
Sources And Methodology
ObamaPollWatch.com is an admittedly amateur effort, but we do try to stay professional when it comes to revealing our sources and methodology. All our source data comes from RealClearPolitics.com; specifically from their daily presidential approval ratings "poll of polls" graphic page. We take their daily numbers, log them, and then average each month's data into a single number -- which is then shown on our monthly charts here (a "poll of polls of polls," if you will...). You can read a much-more detailed explanation of our source data and methodology on our "About Obama Poll Watch" page, if you're interested.
Questions or comments? Use the Email Chris page to drop me a private note.
Column Archives
[July 11], [June 11], [May 11], [Apr 11], [Mar 11], [Feb 11], [Jan 11], [Dec 10], [Nov 10], [Oct 10], [Sep 10], [Aug 10], [Jul 10], [Jun 10], [May 10], [Apr 10], [Mar 10], [Feb 10], [Jan 10], [Dec 09], [Nov 09], [Oct 09], [Sep 09], [Aug 09], [Jul 09], [Jun 09], [May 09], [Apr 09], [Mar 09]
Obama's All-Time Statistics
Monthly
Highest Monthly Approval -- 2/09 -- 63.4%
Lowest Monthly Approval -- 8/11 -- 43.8%
Highest Monthly Disapproval -- 8/11 -- 50.7%
Lowest Monthly Disapproval -- 1/09 -- 19.6%
Daily
Highest Daily Approval -- 2/15/09 -- 65.5%
Lowest Daily Approval -- 8/30/11 -- 43.0%
Highest Daily Disapproval -- 8/30/11 -- 53.2%
Lowest Daily Disapproval -- 1/29/09 -- 19.3%
Obama's Raw Monthly Data
[All-time high in bold, all-time low underlined.]
Month -- (Approval / Disapproval / Undecided)
08/11 -- 43.8 / 50.7 / 5.5
07/11 -- 46.2 / 47.8 / 6.0
06/11 -- 48.5 / 46.0 / 5.5
05/11 -- 51.4 / 43.1 / 5.5
04/11 -- 46.4 / 48.2 / 5.4
03/11 -- 48.1 / 46.4 / 5.5
02/11 -- 49.4 / 44.5 / 6.1
01/11 -- 48.5 / 45.7 / 5.8
12/10 -- 45.5 / 48.1 / 6.4
11/10 -- 45.5 / 49.0 / 5.5
10/10 -- 45.5 / 49.1 / 5.4
09/10 -- 45.7 / 49.7 / 4.6
08/10 -- 45.3 / 49.5 / 5.2
07/10 -- 46.6 / 47.4 / 6.0
06/10 -- 47.6 / 46.7 / 5.7
05/10 -- 48.1 / 45.5 / 6.4
04/10 -- 47.8 / 46.5 / 5.7
03/10 -- 48.1 / 46.4 / 5.5
02/10 -- 47.9 / 46.1 / 6.0
01/10 -- 49.2 / 45.3 / 5.5
12/09 -- 49.4 / 44.9 / 5.7
11/09 -- 51.1 / 43.5 / 5.4
10/09 -- 52.2 / 41.9 / 5.9
09/09 -- 52.7 / 42.0 / 5.3
08/09 -- 52.8 / 40.8 / 6.4
07/09 -- 56.4 / 38.1 / 5.5
06/09 -- 59.8 / 33.6 / 6.6
05/09 -- 61.4 / 31.6 / 7.0
04/09 -- 61.0 / 30.8 / 8.2
03/09 -- 60.9 / 29.9 / 9.2
02/09 -- 63.4 / 24.4 / 12.2
01/09 -- 63.1 / 19.6 / 17.3
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Jagadeesh Gokhale: President Obama's Jobs Dilemma
Michael Brenner: The Great Betrayal
And yet...
...Buried in the Journal/NBC poll is a contradictory nugget: Registered voters, by a 47 percent to 41 percent spread, would rather have Republicans in charge of Congress. That’s the highest level of preference for Republican control since the question was first posed 15 years ago.
On election night while watching PBS, one of the Lehrer group talked of progressives and made a statement that stays with me to this day: "Democrats, don't screw this up." You see, there is a documented history of Democrats getting the ball and dropping it, then finding someone to blame...anyone but themselves.
No Democrat who CAN reach highest office has a chance with progressives...Thus Democrats will screw it up.
There is a much larger group of Liberals who see a big picture for this country and all persons who live in it; they haven't taken their eye off the ball. They keep the president's feet to the flame without destroying cohesiveness of party while he turns this huge oceanliner around. They are out working with rather than wasting energy working against.
The only Obama worshippers I've met have been progressives who apparently had on rosy-colored glasses during the campaign and the election.
BTW, President Obama will win re-election.
Will there come a time when you go to a state level and compare favorable unfavorable by state and see how that stacks up with the electoral college numbers? I know like I said it is way early.
I regret I did not follow your analysis prior to the 2008 election (if you were here then). But look forward to seeing yer columns as the race develops.
Go to the obamapollwatch.com site, scroll down and look over on the right-hand side for a list of columns labeled "2008 Electoral Math Column Series" and click on one of them. Here's a random one from October, 2008:
http://www.chrisweigant.com/2008/10/15/electoral-math-obama-lead-insurmountable/
These columns looked at the election math, rather than job approval numbers. Lots of charts, and a breakdown of the state polling. This is what I'll be doing next year, although I may combine it with these ObamaPollWatch columns in some way, I dunno.
-CW
But things are getting better. Yes, President Obama is being held to an unfair higher standard. But he is still President and will be re-elected in 2012. Even the Republicans know it, which is why no reputable Republicans will enter the race. Now take all the children who grew up with men like Bill Cosby as surrogate fathers who voted for Obama because his dark skin didn't matter, and all the children who are growing up with a black President, and no matter what the racists do or say they will never completely believe the propaganda still being thrown at them. Things are changing. Slowly, but they are changing. Remember, there's a few hundred years of damage that needs to be undone.
Face it...America is fed up with him cuz he cant create any jobs and caves to the reps every time things get tough.
Why not join the Dems who are putting their energy/money/votes into Dem candidates at the state and local level and letting Obama hang himself all on his own.
By retaining the senate and or taking back the House, the Dems will be able to neuter the inevitable Rep. president just as the current house has totally neutered Obama.
Hopefully by 2016 the Dem Party will have regrouped and possibly recovered from the huge mistake of 2008. Perhaps all of America will learn to look beyond the pretty speeches, nifty graphics and meaningless slogans (Hope!) to really see the candidates.
Obviously Obama is ill-equipped to deal with the issues facing the country today. We can't afford another 4 years. he had his chance, failed and must now be set aside for someone new.
Because when the choice comes down to a mediocre Democrat who supports things like a woman's right to choose and a far-right religious fanatic who would rather see women fall back into the submissive 1950s era, there is no real choice. Whoever is elected in 2012 will likely be appointing at least one justice to the SCOTUS. Another Roberts, Scalia or Alito would be disastrous for our country.
The next time you like a candidate, please talk to me first.
The bad news goes beyond just one lousy President. Obama is also seriously damaging the Democratic brand. Even if Obama decided not to run and we found an excellent candidate, I'm sure the Dems will do very badly in 2012--thanks very much to Obama's stunning neoliberal/neocon record.
This president's vision for the country and leadership decisions have not produced any positive results; they have made things worse since he took office. Soon it will be time for change and, maybe, some hope.
I've actually begun to find MYSELF tiresome on the subject........
( I wonder if my friend "Michale" is here?)
SO: Less is more.....no more windy/wordy doomsaying...nosirree.
After all......On a different post...noneother than my old and trusted friend..."LizM" (in a response to someone else) ...reminded me that my own life... as well as those of my children are going along rather swimmingly.......and I am not actually required to spend so much time angry/frustrated/disappointed by events WELL beyond my control......RIGHT?
Notice how I'm POINTEDLY not mentioning last Friday's news "dump"....In which our fearless leader (yet again) ran FAR to the right of not only G.W.Bush......but of none other than Senor Milhouse/Nixon on the subject of breathable air vis-a-vis corporate profits........grrrr
Plainly, I'm incorrigable...
Look:
Re: The upcoming "Jobs" speech..........We all know that the "plan" is the speech...and the speech is the "plan"...and that's about all there is to THAT .....right?
So: Let's wish our "public servants" all the best with that...and keep recycling....conserving energy...buying locally and hoping for better times....as well as playing "We Don't Get Fooled Again" whenever we feel like "rockin' out"....
All kidding aside....many thanx to my true and trusted HP friends (like Liz)......and especially to my tireless and generous brother CW
tm
Of course, that was 'swimmingly' in the relative sense. I must have been praising Geithner - because he gets so much of it - in that post to which you refer ...
Prepare to have your socks knocked off on Thursday night ... you'll have to come over to CW.com right afterward to take part in the festivities. Sadly, I'll be working Thursday night and will not be able to watch the amazing speech live. But, you can be sure that I'll catch up quickly enough to join in on all the fun in the comments section. If Chris doesn't write a column that day - he's working on a book, you know!!! - we'll figure it out, one way or another.
Be there or be square! What!? (Did I just say that?)
Until then, take good care tm!
Whatever could he have done to merit a one-way trip to the "gulag"?
(Pehaps a conversation for another venue)
Speaking of which.....I stopped by our other favorite restaurant... post-speech.....crickits chirping and a drunk or two making things up (it was late)
On the substance of your post.....
"Socks knocked off..."
Wel-l-l-l ...yeah! Pretty much SO.... I'm amazed and pleasantly surprised to say....
Aside from the nuts-n-bolts......
Particularly effective was the simple repetition of "You should pass this....right away"
And "I intend to take this message to every corner of our country".......a source of some (dare I use the word...after so long?)......HOPE!
We'll see about the follow up...but I was, overall surprisingly well-pleased.
Must add.... Did you catch Biden's speech on labor day?
Forcefully and plainly articulate to a HUGE crowd of genuine working folks!
He really has no equal in a setting like that....what the gangsta's call "street cred"
Superb.........
Always the best to you, sis
tm
Actually, there is. One might cut to the chase and say that Obama appears to be unelectable in 2012--and would be, even if the popular vote weren't filtered through the Electoral College; that, to be in the running in 2012, Obama first needs to be re-nominated by the Democratic Party; and that it appears that the Party's penchant for picking unelectable candidates (as it has five times out of eight since 1980) is resurfacing with growing vigor.
One might add that the sound emanating from the Congressional Progressive Caucus, with respect to Obama's renomination, is akin to that of the wind blowing across a vacant prairie and so, that only with a great deal of luck will we wind up with well-educated but extremely conservative President Huntsman--but, far more likely, we'll wind up with four years or more of yet another former college cheerleader and semi-literate faux cowboy from Texas as leader of the free world--and we all know how peachy 2001-09 were for world peace and the average working American (and 2009-11 have been, for that matter).
Of course I will not be voting Obama because unless HE undergoes a fundamental transformation of his outlook and policies, because I think he is taking us in the wrong direction, (although I am still undecided on my Primary vote) .
But I am not counting my chickens in the General election, there is a lot of time between now and then and it is to early to say "that Obama appears to be unelectable in 2012"
A few key states Electoral votes will make the difference and Obama is a good campaigner. A lousy president but a good campaigner.
Obama has to step down now in order for another Democrat to succeed.
The otherwise loquacious, and average American supporting Vice-President Biden have never intervened to point the President to the right direction; the ambitiously political Secretary of state Madam Hilary Clinton, wears a serious poker face. All these lead me to conclude that there's something going on. If you ask me, I will predict that the President will not seek a second term. Some how, there's some agreement during the last campaign, and it just hasn't played out. That will be my guess, a long shot guess, but a reasonable guess given the unusual way the President governed, and spent his mandate.
"From your lips to God's ear"
LOOK HERE LIZ!
Clinton/Biden 2012
(That should start some trouble!)
tm
You know, I still have visions of BIDEN/Hagel (+Geithner, now that I'm a fan) and what might have been ...
Don't get me wrong, though ... Obama has accomplished quite a lot - domestically and internationally - given the toxic and dysfunctional political and media environment in which he has had to operate. Much of the left half of the political spectrum, I might add, have done virtually nothing to mitigate against any of this and are, in fact, responsible for a lot of their own misery ... and mine!
A lesser leader would have folded under the weight.
Interesting. I've seen a couple of other folks on the board guessing the same thing. So who do the Dems have then? Biden, you're saying? Hillary? Do you think either of them can win on the heels of a failed Obama presidency? 2012 isn't looking like the year of the liberal, from where I'm sitting.
What a silly excuse.