Feeding off right-wing talking points, political journalists love to push the idea that Obama's polling numbers are in the tank and that he's fading fast. It's all part of the preferred, CW narrative that his entire presidency is slipping away.
Slight problem: It's not true.
Does the White House wish Obama's job approval rating was higher? I'm sure advisers do. Is there anything unusual in Obama's approval number, other than the fact that it nearly doubles the rating his predecessor left office with? No, not really.
Indeed, the news media's ongoing hand-wringing about Obama's polling numbers and how he's only around 50 percent (it's "tepid" and cause for "worry") is rather odd considering former President Bush served nearly his entire second term with an approval rating below 50 percent and left the presidency with an almost incomprehensibly low 22 percent approval rating.
Also note that for the majority of Bush's first year in office (i.e. up until September 11, 2001), his approval rating remained pretty much exactly where Obama's has been since late last summer: hovering around 50 percent. But do you recall a media obsession about Bush's super-soft poll numbers back during the spring and summer of 2001?
Neither do I.
If you look at Gallup's weekly ratings for Obama, in late August 2009, he had a 50 percent approval rating. And for the most recently completed weekly tabulation from Gallup, Obama's rating stands at 48 percent. That's right, over a nearly seven-month period, the president's approval rating, as measured by Gallup, dropped exactly 2 percentage points, which obviously falls within Gallup's margin of error.
That means you could accurately say that Obama's job approval rating has remained unchanged over the last six-plus months.
Read the entire Media Matters column, here.
Follow Eric Boehlert on Twitter: www.twitter.com/EricBoehlert
Do you still like Obama? Be honest now...
PRINCETON, N.J., March 17 (UPI) -- President Barack Obama's job rating on energy, the economy and the environment has fallen sharply in the last year, a poll released Wednesday suggested.
Fifty-two percent of those polled by Gallup said Obama was doing a good job at protecting the environment, while 70 percent expected Obama to do a good job in a poll taken last March.
Forty-three percent said Obama was doing a good job at improving the nation's energy policy, compared to 72 percent who expected him to do a good job in last year's survey.
Thirty-eight percent rated Obama good at improving the economy, compared to 61 percent a year ago.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/113980/gallup-daily-obama-job-approval.aspx
1. Comparing Obama to Bush's second term is a bit much considering that Bush was so unpopular at the end of his second term that he made it virtually impossible for anyone from his party to be elected... had he, himself, been permitted to run for a third term it would have been a 50 state wipe-out.
2. Comparing Obama to Bush's first term, qualifying for 9/11, but failing to qualify for the fact that Bush entered office having lost the popular vote and with a large percentage of the country still thinking he was illegitimate (the guy couldn't even get out of his car at his own inauguration parade out of fear of being egged and/or assaulted) is selective at best. Being even with that guy isn't exactly a promising development.
3. Gallup's margin of error for a given poll on a given day is over 2%, but when comparing monthly averages? Not hardly. Besides which, Gallup polls all adults rather than likely voters. Big difference when you're a Dem.
Long and short? These polls can't begin to predict whether he'll still be in trouble when presidential election time rolls around. It will depend upon what happens in the country between now and then how he reacts, and who he has to run against. But as of now, he's in some trouble. No point in pretending he's not.
there are so many done by so many organizations, left,centre,right,these days.....it's pretty hard to take any of them, even Gallup, for more than what they are....a snapshot of opinions on the particular day the questions were asked.