Obamapollwatch

This month Obama poll watchers got some good news, and some bad news. This was capped off by the Washington punditocracy making a stupid comparison between polling for Obama and Carter.

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.

[Program Note: Last month, we ran this column four days before the end of May, due to travel plans. We promised we'd update the preliminary numbers i...

"What a difference a death makes." President Obama announced at the very beginning of the month that Osama bin Laden was dead, and his poll numbers reacted almost immediately.

April was a pretty miserable month for Barack Obama, mostly due to the high price of gasoline at the pump. But May is already shaping up to be one of Obama's best months ever, for one very obvious reason.

While catastrophic world events dominated the news for most of the month, Obama's approval rating was being hit with a creeping domestic problem -- the rising price of gasoline.

In terms of shifts in public opinion, January and February were the best two months President Obama has yet had during his entire presidency.

When taken month-to-month, January, 2011, was Obama's best month of his entire presidency. Not only did he finally get his bump -- but it was a truly significant bump.

Obama once again charted an unbelievably stable month in terms of approval ratings. The mildly good news was in his disapproval rating, which dropped significantly over the course of December.

Obama's approval rating ended the month on somewhat of an upswing, at 46.1 percent.Obama's approval rating stayed remarkably steady all month long.

Last month I rashly wrote that since Obama was starting the month on an upswing, he had a good chance of posting largish gains in September. This didn't happen.

Augusts haven't been very kind to Obama. Two years ago, August was "Reverend Wright" month. Last year, August was "death panel" month. By that measure, at least, this past August wasn't actually all that bad.

July had some political successes for Obama, but the public once again didn't give him any credit for passing Wall Street reform, or any of the other achievements Obama chalked up.

Obama seems to have hit a plateau in his approval ratings, which have remained largely unchanged for the past three months. Could it be that we've all just made up our minds about the job the president is doing?

Will Obama's presidency wind up charting a similar course as Carter, or will he recover as Reagan did? Only a fool would even contemplate making such a prediction at this point, that's all that really can be said.

Everyone was looking for a healthy bounce in Obama's poll numbers after health reform passed. This bounce has either failed to materialize yet, or is so gradual it likely won't end up being called a "bounce."

The president's approval and disapproval numbers are within kissing distance. When will Obama turn this around? Will he turn this around?

After taking a look at Obama's numbers for the month, we continue our march backwards through history, this month serving up a comparison between Obama and Richard Nixon's term-and-a-half.

This month, the news for Obama fans is not bad. It's not get-up-and-cheer good, either, but it's a lot better than the news has been for the past two months.

It's time once again for Obama Poll Watch -- our monthly look back at Obama's approval ratings for the previous month.

November wasn't a particularly good month for President Obama in the polls. Not disastrous by any means, but not very cheerful either. For the first time, Obama's numbers flirted with going below 50 percent.

The news for Obama fans continues to be bad this month. There may be a faint glimmer of a spark of hope in the numbers -- but that's about all I can promise here, sorry about that.

The news this month for Obama fans is not particularly good, as Obama has definitely ended his "honeymoon" period (which virtually all first-term presidents go through).