The Official Obama Approval Ratings Thread

[Tender Branson]

Latest New Hampshire poll by the University of NH:

Obama Approval Rating

66% Approve
21% Disapprove

Obama Favorable Rating:

71% Favorable
16% Unfavorable

These findings are based on the latest Granite State Poll conducted by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center. 619 randomly selected New Hampshire adults were interviewed by telephone between February 5 and February 9, 2009. The margin of sampling error for the survey is +/-3.9 percent.

http://www.unh.edu/survey-center/news/pdf/gsp2009_winter_presapp21609.pdf

[Tender Branson]

Latest Rhode Island poll by Brown University:

How would you rate the job Barack Obama is doing as president?

Excellent/Good: 62.4%
Fair/Poor: 16.5%
Don’t know/No answer: 21.1%

The survey was conducted Feb. 7-10, 2009, at Brown University by Marion Orr, the Fred Lippitt Professor of Public Policy and Political Science and director of the Taubman Center for Public Policy and the John Hazen White Public Opinion Laboratory. It is based on a statewide random sample of 451 registered voters in Rhode Island. Overall, the poll had a margin of error of about plus or minus 4.6 percentage points.

http://news.brown.edu/pressreleases/2009/02/survey

[Tender Branson]

Biggest ones left: Michigan, Georgia, Arizona, Indiana, Maryland, and Colorado.   

Maybe sooner or later we'll get a Georgia poll by Strategic Vision and an Arizona poll by BRC or KAET, but I think it's unlikely that we'll see a poll from the other states, allthough there's a slight chance that Selzer may poll Michigan for the Detroit Free Press.

[Tender Branson]

Biggest ones left: Michigan, Georgia, Arizona, Indiana, Maryland, and Colorado.   

Maybe sooner or later we'll get a Georgia poll by Strategic Vision and an Arizona poll by BRC or KAET, but I think it's unlikely that we'll see a poll from the other states, allthough there's a slight chance that Selzer may poll Michigan for the Detroit Free Press.

Selzer is really good; it got Indiana and Missouri right in 2008. Strategic Vision has a GOP bias, so I would have to give it a grain of salt as I gave PPP with its Democratic bias... 

Heck, Montana would be interesting because it was a swing state.

Selzer is generally good, but overestimated Obama in IA. SV tends to overestimate Republicans early in the year (just like Rasmussen), but ends up producing good polls just before the election. They just got FL wrong last year. PPP was also rather good, underestimated Obama in Nevada and got MT wrong.

[Tender Branson]

Update:

Rasmussen: 60% Approve, 39% Disapprove

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/obama_approval_index_history

Gallup: 62% Approve, 25% Disapprove

http://www.gallup.com/poll/113980/Gallup-Daily-Obama-Job-Approval.aspx

FOX News/Opinion Dynamics: 60% Approve, 26% Disapprove

http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/021909_FNCPoll.pdf

ARG: 60% Approve, 33% Disapprove

http://americanresearchgroup.com/economy/

AP-GfK: 67% Approve, 24% Disapprove

http://surveys.ap.org/data%5CGfK%5CAP-GfK%20Poll%20Topline%20021809.pdf

.....

New York (Quinnipiac)

72% Approve, 17% Disapprove

http://www.quinnipiac.edu/x1318.xml?ReleaseID=1267

Florida (Quinnipiac)

64% Approve, 23% Disapprove
69% Favorable, 22% Unfavorable

http://www.quinnipiac.edu/x1297.xml?ReleaseID=1266

North Carolina (PPP)

52% Approve, 41% Disapprove

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/PPP_Release_NC_218.pdf

[Tender Branson]

Michigan (Rasmussen - Feb. 18 - 500 LV):

68% Approve
32% Disapprove

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/states_general/michigan/toplines/toplines_michigan_february_18_2009

[Tender Branson]

Latest Washington numbers (R2000 for DailyKos, Feb. 16-18, 600 LV):

66% favorable
21% unfavorable

http://www.dailykos.com/statepoll/2009/2/18/WA/209

[Tender Branson]

Georgia (Rasmussen - Feb. 17 - 500 LV):

58% Approve
41% Disapprove

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/states_general/georgia/toplines/toplines_georgia_likely_voters_february_17_2009

[Tender Branson]

According to Rasmussen's Daily Tracking, Obama's national approval was 59%.

So, if 58% approve in Georgia (which was about -5 for Obama in the '08 election) and 68% in Michigan (which was about +5 for Obama), I think his national approval must be somewhere around 63%.

[Tender Branson]

New CNN poll:

67% Approve
29% Disapprove

[Tender Branson]

What Happened to the Hopemonger?

By David Paul Kuhn

Here's a fact that will probably shock you: Americans today have the same level of confidence in President Obama as they had in George W. Bush after his first month in office. According to Gallup, Obama's public approval rating currently stands at 63 percent, only a point above George W. Bush in late February 2001.

Few modern presidents have been greeted with such lofty expectations as Obama. That Obama now stands where Bush did eight years ago, on the eve of his first address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, serves as a reminder of how quickly the demands of the presidency can sober even the most talented politicians.

Obama's popularity today, by Gallup's measure, is a few points higher than Bill Clinton, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan at the infancy of their presidencies. He precisely matches George H.W. Bush. And excluding Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson who took office amid tragedy, and therefore earned staggeringly high early approval, Obama is notably shy of other new presidents. Jimmy Carter and John Kennedy had more than seven out of 10 Americans behind them at the close of their first February in office.

This is the stage Obama takes tomorrow. The hardest legislative battles are before him and the luster that greeted him on Inauguration Day is now behind him.

It's long been said that presidents are only as powerful as their public perception. Already, President Obama has lost a measure of his hopefulness at the moment he most requires it. The public seems to have noticed. And there are some in Washington who speculate that Obama's standing could still worsen.

"Obama is in a much weaker position than his poll numbers suggest and I think that the whole thing could collapse on him sooner rather than later," Doug Schoen, one of Bill Clinton's former pollsters, said.

That remains to be seen. But even at this early stage, Obama has already assumed a good deal of risk. With his first major legislative accomplishment, a $787 billion dollar economic stimulus bill, he has taken ownership of an economy that could quickly worsen.

Obama's potential legislative achievements ahead will be directly tied to his popularity, which has ebbed a couple points in recent weeks. The portion of the public disapproving of the president has also doubled over that period, from 12 percent to 24 percent.

Just last year, President Bush was unable to rally his own party around his bailout legislation because he no longer carried with him the perception of public support. There was a similar impasse a couple years earlier as Bush pushed for immigration reform.

Obama's challenges are far greater than Bush's at the outset of his presidency, as are his objectives. Obama's domestic agenda is the most ambitious since Lyndon Johnson.

President Johnson, however, reminds us of what can go wrong. LBJ aspired to be the greatest president since Franklin Roosevelt. But he escalated a war without end and lost control of the times. Obama's fate is not likely that of Johnson's. But despite the allusions to Roosevelt, comparisons to FDR may be no more apt.

Obama seems however not to be discussed in these sober terms. In fact the one person who could use less sober words, the president himself, seems too solemn in his first weeks.

Obama scoffed during the 2008 campaign at some in Washington considering him, in Obama's words, a "hope-monger." But this is not Obama’'s problem of late. The Democratic president is not offering Carter's malaise. But now some wonder whether the president is helping matters by repeatedly comparing the nation's hard times to its worst economic catastrophe, the Great Depression.

The unemployment rate remains a third of what it was in the first year of Franklin Roosevelt's presidency. FDR inherited a stock market that was 75 percent below its 1929 high. It took decades for the market to return to that high. Obama is right to worry about what more could happen, but he's hardly helping the markets when he repeatedly harkens to its most horrible era.

Moreover, it never helps a player who is in a slump to keep talking about it. So it is with the nation as well. There are now increasingly calls for Obama to move toward the more convincing and sanguine rhetoric of Roosevelt and Reagan. Last week, the president who came from a place called Hope (Arkansas) asked for more soaring words from the candidate of hope. Bill Clinton praised Obama's realism, but he added to ABC News that he “would like” Obama to conclude his speeches “by saying that he is hopeful and completely convinced we’re gonna come through this.” Clinton's talent is not just that he uses optimistic words, but that he conveys reassurance as well. Obama must do no less, especially since some of his ebb in popularity may be partially rooted in his more somber tone.

FDR owned this sense of optimism. His inaugural address framed fear as the antagonist with the famous line, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” He spoke of overcoming the Great Depression in war-like terms, requesting similarly broad executive powers. He said what mattered was to “try something.” Obama has taken that lesson to heart. Yet FDR was able to do so, in part, because he kept the country believing that he could.

"You have a lot of people invested in this guy succeeding," said Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio of Obama. Fabrizio believes its “always better to under promise and over deliver.”

That may be true when it comes to legislation and predicting public support, but Schoen argues that a president must over deliver on the big picture. Obama's restrained optimism, in Schoen's view, is not helping a president already undermined by early mishaps, such as his problems with several cabinet nominations.

"Thirty days after Obama [took office] the Democrats face much more vulnerability than I ever thought was Possible," Schoen said.

Obama came into office with unrivaled good will. Now his early Bush-like level of popularity reminds his White House that goodwill can only do so much.

But that Obama remains slightly more popular than Reagan, after his first month, reminds the White House that a president can take on a lofty aura that sometimes eludes him early on. In January 1981, Reagan inherited the same unemployment rate as Obama. But Reagan conveyed in words and tone Americans indigenous optimism, as Obama still must.

Both Reagan and Obama began their presidencies with less than one in five Americans “satisfied” with the direction of the country. At the same time, today, like when Reagan first took office, eight in 10 Americans remain “satisfied with the way things are going in” their “own personal life.” Recently, the Pew Research Center found that 46 percent of Americans believe “the nation's economy will improve” in the next year. By comparison, 59 percent of Americans believe their personal finances will improve.

In other words, the people today seem more optimistic than their president. They haven't given up hope, and Obama's burden tomorrow is to demonstrate that neither has he.
David Paul Kuhn is the author of The Neglected Voter.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/02/what_happened_to_the_hopemonge.html

[Tender Branson]

NYT/CBS News Poll:

63% Approve
22% Disapprove

The latest New York Times/CBS News poll is based on telephone interviews conducted Feb. 18 through Feb. 22 with 1,112 adults throughout the United States.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/politics/20090224poll-results.pdf

Washington Post/ABC News Poll:

68% Approve
25% Disapprove

This ABC News/Washington Post poll was conducted by telephone Feb. 19-22, 2009, among a random national sample of 1,001 adults including both landline and cell phone-only respondents.

http://abcnews.go.com/images/PollingUnit/1086a2ObamaatOneMonth.pdf

[Tender Branson]

This week we should also get fresh 15-state numbers from SUSA ...

[Tender Branson]

North Carolina (Civitas Institute):

65% Approve
16% Disapprove

The study of 600 registered voters was conducted Feb. 16 to 19, 2009. All respondents were part of a fully representative sample of registered voters in North Carolina. For purposes of this study, voters we interviewed had to have voted in either the 2004, 2006 or 2008 general elections or were newly registered voters since 2008. The confidence interval associated with a sample of this size is such that: 95 percent of the time, results from 600 interviews (registered voters) will be within +-4%.

http://www.wnct.com/nct/news/local/article/nc_president_obama_poll_results/32263/

[Tender Branson]

SurveyUSA has just released the new February polls from 14 states:

Alabama:

48% Approve (-12)
45% Disapprove (+21)

California:

63% Approve (-14)
33% Disapprove (+18)

Iowa:

63% Approve (-5)
32% Disapprove (+10)

Kansas:

54% Approve (-8)
37% Disapprove (+13)

Kentucky:

57% Approve (-5)
37% Disapprove (+12)

Massachusetts:

66% Approve (-12)
29% Disapprove (+18)

Minnesota:

62% Approve (-2)
32% Disapprove (+11)

Missouri:

51% Approve (-14)
43% Disapprove (+22)

New Mexico:

59% Approve (-6)
34% Disapprove (+12)

New York:

70% Approve (-8)
25% Disapprove (+14)

Oregon:

61% Approve (-7)
32% Disapprove (+14)

Virginia:

54% Approve (-8)
42% Disapprove (+19)

Washington:

64% Approve (-5)
32% Disapprove (+15)

Wisconsin:

60% Approve (-10)
37% Disapprove (+19)

[Tender Branson]

For the first time in Rasmussen's Daily Tracking there are no "Undecideds" today:

60% Approve
40% Disapprove

BTW, Gallup:

65% Approve
21% Disapprove

[Tender Branson]

Also, Texas Approval Ratings for Obama by PPP:

45% Approve
46% Disapprove

PPP polled 1,409 likely voters from February 18th to 20th. The survey’s margin of error is +/-2.6%. Other factors, such as refusal to be interviewed and weighting, may introduce additional error that is more difficult to quantify.

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/PPP_Release_Texas_226.pdf

Seems to be the first poll that shows a negative rating for Obama ...

[Tender Branson]

California (Public Policy Institute of California):

70% Approve
16% Disapprove

This report presents the responses of 2,502 California adult residents, including 1,453 likely
voters. Interviewing took place on weekday nights and weekend days from February 3–17, 2009.

http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/survey/S_209MBS.pdf

[Tender Branson]

Pennsylvania (Franklin & Marshall):

How would you rate the way that Barack Obama is handling his job as president?

55% Excellent/Good
36% Fair/Poor

Is your opinion of Barack Obama favorable or unfavorable ?

56% Favorable
23% Unfavorable

The survey findings presented in this release are based on the results of interviews conducted February 17-22, 2009. The data included in this release represent the responses of 644 adult residents of Pennsylvania. The sample error for this survey is +/- 3.9 percent.

http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/download/2009/0226/18801144.pdf

[Tender Branson]

Latest DailyKos/R2000 weekly update:

71% Favorable
25% Unfavorable

A total of 2400 adults nationally were interviewed by telephone. A cross-section of calls was made into each state in the country in order to reflect the adult population nationally. The margin for error, according to standards customarily used by statisticians, is no more than plus or minus 2% percentage points.

http://www.dailykos.com/weeklytrends
http://www.dailykos.com/weeklypoll/2009/2/26

[Tender Branson]

North Carolina (Elon University):

59% Approve
25% Disapprove

The survey was conducted Sunday, February 22nd through Thursday, February 26th of
2009. Interviews for this survey were completed with 758 adults from households in North Carolina. For a sample size of 758, there is a 95 percent probability that our survey
results are within plus or minus 3.6 percentage points.

http://www.elon.edu/docs/e-web/elonpoll/022709_ElonPollData.pdf

[Tender Branson]

Obama Surge !

Rasmussen - Tuesday - 03/03/2009:

60% Approve (+2)
39% Disapprove (-2)

[Tender Branson]

Cook Political Report/RT Strategies Poll (Feb 27-March 1, 2009):

57% Approve
28% Disapprove
15% Undecided

http://www.cookpolitical.com/poll

[Tender Branson]

Tennessee (MTSU poll):

53% Approve
27% Disapprove

RACIST JOKES: “Nearly one in six Tennesseans has told a joke about Barack Obama’s race, and three-fourths say they’ve heard or read at least one, even though only 15 percent of Tennesseans say they would find such a joke funny.”

http://www.mtsusurveygroup.org/mtpoll/s2009/MTSU%20Poll%20National%20Report_final.pdf

[Tender Branson]

WSJ/NBC poll (February 26-March 1, 2009):

60% Approve
26% Disapprove
14% Undecided

68% Have positive feelings about Obama
19% Have negative feelings about Obama
13% Have neutral feelings about Obama

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/MSNBC/Sections/090303_NBC-WSJ_poll.pdf