What do we make of President Obama's first 100 days? The answer is that he falls within the norm. His favorability rating--which is certainly high, but not historic--puts him about where George W. Bush was at this time in 2001. In fact, his rating is similar to Jimmy Carter's in April of 1977 and Richard Nixon's in April of 1969. President Obama's approval rating is typical of a "change" election President. The only "outlier" is Bill Clinton, and that is most likely due to his low vote share (43%) in the election. So forget the 100 day hype. Obama is where he should be.
1. Watch Independent voters when trying to assess how well the President is doing. While Independents gave the President strong job approval ratings in the early days of his administration, their disapproval grew rapidly so that by mid-March those Independents disapproving of the President's job rose to nearly 40%. Since that time, this number has dropped to around 30%. Our sense is that the President needs to keep his disapproval rating among Independent voters either at or below 40% to successfully sell his policies.
3. It's almost all about the stock market. We should really start calling it the political-economy. If you are trying to figure out whether Americans are feeling better or worse about the President or the economy, just check the stock market. Since March 9th, when the Dow hit bottom at 6547 it has improved nearly 25% to 8254 (at the time of this writing).
DOW Jones Industrial Average in 2009
Now look at public opinion polling on the state of the economy. For nearly one month after passage of the stimulus bill and its signing by the President on February 17th, there was very little movement on the measure. Approximately 70% of voters thought the country was getting worse for that period of time. It wasn't until the market uptick that started in the middle of March that you began to see fewer people saying that the economy was worsening and more saying that it was getting better. Of course, the media echo chamber is a contributor, as were some of the data (economic indicators) we began seeing the last month. During the same period, we also saw the President's job approval improve. While they will never say it, the White House political operatives are paying close attention to the stock market because for the immediate future, their success is intrinsically tied to it.