Karl Rove cites numbers from the Pew Reseach Center to argue that Barack Obama "has done more to [quickly] polarize America" than any president "in the past 40 years."
Michael Gerson uses the same numbers to call Obama "the most polarizing new president in recent times."
Michael Dimock, Pew's associate director, responds via Greg Sargent:
"It's unfair to say that Obama has caused this divisiveness or to say that he is a polarizing president," Dimock said. He claimed that this phenomenon is driven by long-term trends, uncommon Dem enthusiasm, and the Republican tendency to be more hostile to opposing presidents than Democrats.
CBS's Sarah Dutton and Gallup's Jeff Jones share historical "polarization" data collected by their organizations.
Andrew Sullivan and Charlie Cook are watching the independents (and remember, we now have separate charts that break out Obama's approval rating among Democrats, Republicans and independents).
More from Nate Silver, Chris Cillizza, Amy Walter, Jay Cost, Peter Wehner, Eric Kleefeld, Chuck Todd et. al., DemfromCT, Steve Benen, Glen Bolger and Ed Kilgore.
And in other news...
Mark Mellman adds his perspective on the AAPOR report on what went wrong in New Hampshire.
Nate Silver and Michael Goldfarb debate the future of public opinion on gay marriage, Andrew Gelman has more.
Steve Benen, Chris Good, Nate Silver and John Judis react to a Rasmussen Reports result on American's views on capitalism.
Jim Warren surveys political scientists about the state of political polling.
Jennifer Agiesta takes the Post's Doug Feaver to task for calling blog comments "a pretty good political survey."
Gary Langer contrasts polls and online ballots on the subject of marijuana legalization.
Anna Greenberg releases a multi-mode survey of young adults on the economy (commissioned by Qvisory, via First Read).
Patrick Ruffini questions whether NY-20 is a Republican stronghold.
Eric Kleefeld reports county-by-county breakdowns of the NY-20 recount.
M. Zuhdi Jasser takes exception to Washington PostABC News results on American perceptions of Muslims.
Carl Bialik considers the shortcomings of measuring an online activity with an online panel survey (more here).
John Sides shares a tantalizing graph on the 2008 campaign from the not yet released Annenberg tracking data.
Anand Rajaraman says "more data usually beats better algorithms" (via Lundry).
Ohio lets voters draw their own congressional districts (via John Sides).
And...Happy Passover everyone (and Easter too)!!
(via Lee Siegelman)