The Official Obama Approval Ratings Thread

[pbrower2a]

But Red is associated with Democrats (and now Obama) in this Forum.... and yellow gives an adequate contrast and is available. I can't hold anyone to my choice, but I had good reason for picking yellow. Nobody seemed to complain about the color until now.

[pbrower2a]

Survey USA gives Obama a small net positive rating in Alabama. Thus the color change!

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Did anyone watch O' Reilly in Late October? I remember one of Zogby's polls was being publicized because it said more Americans like McCain better on the economy then Obama. Then, they had Dick Morris on, and he infamously said: "The tide is turning. This is just the tip of the iceberg." LOL. Hilarious. Zogby is SO horrible.

The Propaganda Channel (FoX "News") isn't a reliable source. It spins everything as its ownership wants news to be spun -- and we all know what that means. If it doesn't get the news that it likes it creates the news. It deliberately conflates its analysis with objective reporting, and its selection of talking heads is one of choosing the appropriate lapdogs (for Dubya) and attack dogs (for Clinton and Obama). When a guest fails to take the Party Line FoX "News" turns on the guest, calling the fellow a nut, a member of the Far Left, or un-American.

Does anyone remember the Valerie Plame scandal? As other media were examining it, FoX "News" diverted people with the wall-to-wall coverage of the disappearance of Natalee Holloway in Aruba. I'm not going to trivialize the disappearance (and likely death) of a pretty girl from the right side of the tracks (or an ugly one from the wrong side), but I knew that as soon as FoX "News" started a story in Aruba there was news to be had elsewhere.

Add to this, a survey of Americans on news sources and their correlation to being right on the Iraq war asked people to agree or disagree with three statements involving the war:

1. Saddam Hussein had connections to such international terror groups as al-Qaeda.

2. Saddam Hussein possessed or tried to procure or develop weapons of mass destruction despite sanctions imposed by the United Nations.

3. The rest of the world generally concurs with the American invasion of Iraq.

All three statements are demonstrably false.

Then they were asked what news sources they replied on.  It is hardly surprising that those who depended upon newspapers (printed or electronic) were most likely to get all three answers right.  Radio sources were next-best, NPR listeners getting the best marks. Regular viewers of CNN and MSNBC were slightly poorer, but generally well-informed. Viewers of PBS' News Hour with Jim Lehrer did about as well as NPR radio listeners... but that's no-fluff news and it does not make compromises for attention spans. 

Those who relied upon the news of the nightly news  three main networks (CBS, ABC, and NBC) were highly likely to get it wrong. It's just not possible to get all of one's news from 30 minutes of televised news that fits a commercial format.

Now here's the tragedy -- regular viewers of FoX News Channel got it most regularly -- WRONG! Its viewers watch much of what looks like news...  but somehow isn't.

Oddly, those who relied on Comedy Central's Daily Show got it right about as well as NPR listeners. That's a comedy program!

(Whatever virtues regular viewers of FoX "News", being well-informed isn't one of them).

It uses the US flag extensively as if acceptance of its disinformation at face value were an act of patriotism.

That entity is more adept at propaganda than Pravda ever was.

 

[pbrower2a]

Wisconsin and Iowa would seem very similar. Until they see real campaigning they don't seem very partisan. People there start making up their minds when the campaigning gets serious; until then they want leaders to govern. It's just as well.

[pbrower2a]

Now add South Carolina, where Obama has more approval than does the Governor, someone supposedly having a chance to be a Presidential or VP nominee.

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Now add South Carolina, where Obama has more approval than does the Governor, someone supposedly having a chance to be a Presidential or VP nominee.

SurveyUSA now supports the Crantford & Associates poll:

Do you approve or disapprove of the job Mark Sanford is doing as Governor?

41% Approve
55% Disapprove

http://www.surveyusa.com/client/PollReport.aspx?g=fa7fe67e-60d1-4167-999c-fc2f6dbda8cd

Not so hot numbers for the "great Republican rising star in 2012" ...

The first stage of ruin is DENIAL.

... I don't have a drinking problem; I can quit drinking at any time.

... Cancer? Not me!

... This pitcher with a high ERA or batter now hitting .240 is on the brink of pulling out of a slump.

... I can still make the minimum payment.

... I don't need no book-learnin'. I'll show that teacher yet!

... The President will yet make a fool of himself.

[pbrower2a]

Now add South Dakota, with 3EV. 

The biggest states in electoral votes for which there are no polls are Maryland, Indiana, Colorado, Louisiana, and Oklahoma.

[pbrower2a]

The biggest states in electoral votes for which there are no polls are Maryland, Indiana, Colorado, Louisiana, and Oklahoma.

Well, actually there was a Maryland poll, but it was conducted January 5-9, before Obama was sworn in as President.

The results from this Gonzales Research survey:

Do you approve or disapprove of the way President-elect Barack Obama is handling his transition?

80% Approve
11% Disapprove

http://www.garesearch.com/Surveys/Maryland_Media_Poll_January_2009.htm

That's what an 80% approval rating looks like in Maryland. Of course I figure that Maryland would be about 70%, and I don't qualify as a pollster. But I still have to go with this:

What people predict about the baseball season around April Fool's Day will mean nothing during the World Series.

[pbrower2a]

"With Obama as President, the US is on the right way again":

89% Yes

"I´m happy that Obama visits Germany":

82% Yes

"With Obama as President, the US is a country that we can trust":

78% Yes

"Obama's first months in office have surprised me in a positive way":

72% Yes

http://www.tagesschau.de/inland/deutschlandtrend592.html

"Would you want Obama to father your daughter's child?"

94% Yes

"Do you approve of Obama's blond hair and blue eyes?"

88% Yes

Germans are gullible people.  Remember, these are the people that elected Hitler.

They aren't so gullible as they were seventy years ago. They aren't the psychological primitives that Sigmund Freud exposed -- the sorts of people who couldn't recognize what a fraud Hitler was -- anymore. They are no longer the people that one can most lead with a manual that might as well have been titled "How to control people through deception and misplaced pride".  

I'd be more scared of the Germans if they admired Dubya and loathed Obama. Wouldn't you?

[pbrower2a]

I'd be more scared of the Germans if they admired Dubya and loathed Obama. Wouldn't you?

There are people like that.
They are called Israelis.

Don't worry, px75.  I don't like Jews either.

American Jews voted heavily for Obama. What's wrong with Judaism, anyway?

(No, I am not Jewish, but I certainly respect Jews for their achievements and their comparatively-few pathologies. For one thing, Jews never persecuted my Quaker, Huguenot, Mennonite, or Moravian ancestors. For another, they were the white people most likely to support the Civil Rights Movement and did not participate in segregationist politics.

I'm not black, either, by the way).

[pbrower2a]

Kentucky(PPP)

Approve 46%
Disapprove 45%

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/PPP_Release_KY_406.pdf

New map:

Did anyone expect Kentucky to give Obama a strong positive approval rating indefinitely?

[pbrower2a]

Hasn't there been any polls from Indiana?

... or Colorado, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, or Oklahoma

[pbrower2a]

Why does Rasmussen like being idiots? 57% approval? Likely voters? I liked them during the campaign but now they're just being ridiculous.

Also, why hasn't any polling organization polled one of the closest states of the election and a state that went Democrat for the first time in 44 years yet!!!!

Whats wrong with a 57% approval? Thats more realistic than CBSNews and CNN 66% crap.

Rasmussen got it right in 2000 and 2004. But his "likely voters" screen would have rejected as a "likely voter" someone under 22 who was actively involved in a campaign because that person had never voted in a Presidential election.  That screen proved unduly rigid in 2008. Obama wasn't Kerry, and 2008 was very different from 2004.

Although the young adult vote is capricious it is capricious in odd ways.   

[pbrower2a]

New map:

Obama is still above 50% in Georgia... That's still trouble for the GOP. Big trouble!

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Map update:

South Dakota approval rating 62%? South Dakota went decisively for John McCain in 2008.

[pbrower2a]

Map update:

Yellow is for larger disapproval than approval.

What can you expect of a State that voted for Rick Perry?

[pbrower2a]

In case someone wants to see what an 80% approval rating looks like in a substantial state if one rounds up 75% to 80%.

It looks like an outlier, so back to what I really think it is (round 75% down to 70%):

75% is hard to get even as an outlier even for a Democrat in New York State.

[pbrower2a]

Map update:

When you want a Colorado poll and you get it, you don't have cause to carp about it being something other than what you like.

[pbrower2a]

You should not base 2012 predictions on polls that are 44 months out. These are just for fun. Your posts will only get bumped in the future and laughed at.

Of course. Four months before Election Day, 2008 the Presidency entailed a very close race. Sarah Palin showed herself a fool and the economy melted down, and it's merciful for the GOP that the election of 2008 didn't happen later. The polls are at best snapshots of sentiment in a place at given time. Example: there were times in which McCain was ahead of Obama or when Obama was ahead of McCain in Alaska.

The "Tea Party"  activities gave free publicity to the GOP and right-wing interests. A pundit on the Propaganda Channel (FoX "News") just played it up as the beginning of the end for Obama's Presidency. The Republican candidate of  2012 be obliged to offer an alternative to Barack Obama in 2012. A mealy-mouthed stealth candidate won't win; neither will a nut.

Many thought Michael Dukakis a shoo-in in the summer of 1988.

[pbrower2a]

Obama might experience softer approval ratings from hard-core liberals these days, after coddling the CIA torturers and not prosecuting former members of the vicious and murderous Bush junta. Many of them could move to "undecided" now, pushing down his high approvals in states like Jersey and Massachusetts.

Imaginable -- but should there be indictments of people of low morals formerly in high places, then that would really scare the Right.

[pbrower2a]

Isn't the PPP poll registered voters?  Rasmussen is likely voters and they Obama in the 60s.  The Gallup and AP polls are all adults.

Isn't the unreported story on these approval ratings that Obama's numbers among people who are paying attention are mediocre and his numbers among people who get their news by reading the cover of Us Weekly in the supermarket checkout are high?

Shouldn't we start saying that PPP and Rasmussen are the canary in the coal mine?  That they are outliers because they measure a different, and more relevant, universe of people than the AP and Gallup polls?  And that their sample is telling us where things are headed?

Of course it is 44 months until the next Presidential election. We don't know what sort of Presidency Obama will have.

The signs are far better than those for George W. Bush at the same stage of the Presidency, and Dubya won re-election... barely. I can see how Obama can lose in 2012 :

1. Sex scandal. For obvious reasons he has less leeway for sexual misdeeds than did Bill Clinton. The bromide that a politician can get away anything in bed other than a live boy or a dead woman doesn't apply to Obama; Obama can't get away with the exposure that a white female of any kind, no matter how willing she is, has shared a bed with him. Clinton got away with Monica Lewinsky; Obama could never. The best advice for Obama to remain President after 2012 is to stay with Michelle Obama. If anything happens to Michelle, then Obama had better not end up with any white, Asian, or non-black Hispanic woman; he isn't a popular musician, pro athlete, or professional athlete.

2. Economic calamity. Nobody expects any reprise of the real-estate boom of the Dubya era; such is clearly impossible. Real estate will be a very poor investment in the 2010s unless it is bought cheaply or built cheaply... and everyone knows that. Enough time remains for a boom that goes bust.

3. A persistent international calamity. A bolt from the blue (Pearl Harbor, Khobar Towers bombing, 9/11) doesn't cause so many problems for the President as does a war going badly (Korean War, Vietnam War 1966-1968, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2007-2008) or a bad situation with no obvious solution (Carter-era '444 Days' situation in Iran).

4. A bungled response to a natural disaster -- volcanic eruption, hurricane, earthquake, flood, or urban conflagration. Before 2005, such had never happened. After Hurricane Katrina, the President's Party had one political problem after another. To be sure, Dubya wasn't running for re-election, but the bad situation surely weakened the chances of some GOP Representatives and Senators to be re-elected in 2006 and 2008. In 2012 such bungling would endanger the chances of re-election of the President.

5. A mega-scandal involving abuse of power or economic corruption that Obama can't sweep under the rug.

If Obama avoids such snares, then he wins re-election. If he gets a steady economic recovery with "tax-and-spend" liberalism, then the only people who will reliably respond to condemnation of that method are the people who would never give a break to any Democratic nominee for President. The relevant and most recent parallel is Ronald Reagan, who ended the stagflation of the 1970s with economic decisions that the liberal playbook mentioned only with the words "Absolutely not!" Walter Mondale campaigned on opposition to the harsh effects of Reaganomics -- and won support almost entirely from core Democrats. That obviously wasn't enough for a Mondale victory.

A slow wind-down of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan won't be too little for Obama; fault will fall upon Dubya for the wars. Some negotiated settlement? That was Dwight Eisenhower. After eight years of you-know-who, an Eisenhower-like Presidency would look very good.

........

I look at the map of approval ratings, and I notice one huge trend: that the political polarization by region is far less than it was on Election Day. That itself is good for America. The approval map does not show that Obama is going to win Utah, Alabama, or Kentucky in 2012; in fact it doesn't even show that Obama will win Michigan or Pennsylvania. It shows, apparently, that potential voters do not yet reject Obama in overwhelming numbers anywhere -- yet. Americans in all regions -- even in some States that voted against him by 20% or greater margins -- give him a chance.  

Obama has ways in which he can lose his re-election bid in 2012, and many in which to win.       

    

[pbrower2a]

Isn;t the PPP poll registered voters?  Rassmusen is likely voters and they Obama in the 60s.  The Gallup and AP polls are all adults.

Isn't the unreported story on these approval ratings that Obama's numbers among people who are paying attention are mediocre and his numbers among people who get their news by reading the cover of Us Weekly in the supermarket checkout are high?

Shouldn't we start saying that PPP and Rasmussen are the canary in the coal mine?  That they are outliers because they measure a different, and more relevant, universe of people than the AP and Gallup polls?  And that their sample is telling us where things are headed?

Trying to poll "likely voters" in an off-year is just a bad idea.

Indeed -- especially when some of the voters in the 2012 election aren't yet 15 years old, when Obama has yet to state that he will run for re-election, and nobody knows who the GOP nominee will be.   

[pbrower2a]

Latest update:

...

The biggest state in electoral votes not yet shown is Indiana (11).  Next is Maryland (10), which I suspect will show up in a very dark shade of green. Louisiana (9) should be interesting.

If Obama is picking up support from blue-collar workers and people with low incomes, then he is likely cutting into the two traditionally-Democratic constituencies in which the GOP has made inroads -- most significantly, poor whites. Contrary to a common American myth, most poor people are white. Obama did very well among poor non-whites -- blacks, Latinos, and First People. 

[pbrower2a]

Latest update:

...

The biggest state in electoral votes not yet shown is Indiana (11).  Next is Maryland (10), which I suspect will show up in a very dark shade of green. Louisiana (9) should be interesting.

... It is surprising that Obama has positive ratings in several states that he lost in 2008. If he is roughly as well-regarded in Kansas (which he lost big) as he is in Pennsylvania (which he won big), then he is doing better at creating popularity than he did at election time.

Possible explanations:

1. Obama has maxed out his support in the "Blue firewall". There's just no way for him to get greater support in New York or California.

2. Obama is picking up support from constituencies who didn't vote for him in 2008: farmers? Poor white people?

I look at South Dakota and Kansas, two of the most rural states in America... and perhaps some people who didn't vote for him now think that he isn't "all that bad". I look at such states as Arkansas and Kentucky and figure that people who couldn't vote for him because he was "too urban", "too Northern", or "too liberal" in 2008... find his policies tolerable. Maybe fewer people in those states get FoX Propaganda Channel.  

3. Obama may be succeeding at reducing the political polarization in America. Does anyone see any Rove-like "majority of a majority" stuff under Obama? He has already set his style of leadership, and people may be seeing it as more effective than what they have seen recently.

4. Obama still has much good will on the economy. He's not  getting blame for the economic distress that Americans now endure -- yet. He could get blame for new economic distress should it occur, but that distress (like a second crash) has yet to happen.

5. Should the pattern hold, the GOP is in deep trouble in 2012. It might whittle away a couple of House seats of marginally-incompetent Democrats or those in districts decidedly more conservative than the average in 2010, but in 2012... the GOP has few areas that it can now rely upon for votes. Huckabee might win a bunch of states now in pale green in the southeastern US only to lose in the Upper Plains while whittling away nothing from the Blue Firewall. Palin and Romney look as if they would have trouble in the South because they have no obvious ties to it -- and neither can whittle away at the Blue Firewall. Who runs shapes how elections... but if I were predicting the 2012 Presidential election, I could only predict (assuming no real change, itself asking much) that the only significant difference between possible GOP nominees is how they lose.  

6. Obama is a masterful politician, and that shows in approval polls. The approval ratings don't show his techniques so much as they show the geographical basis of his approval.


 


  

[pbrower2a]

Latest update (after some SurveyUSA polls):

... Survey USA is a GOP-leaning poll. It might still be accurate.

Indiana, anyone? Louisiana? Montana?