The Official Obama Approval Ratings Thread

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

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You can trust that I will not be using their polls on my maps.
 

Phew, thank goodness. For a moment there, I was worried your maps might get infiltrated with partisan bias.

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

Be careful in what you wish for; you might not like what you wish for. 

You are wise beyond your wise.

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

P.S. (liberal soapbox) I don't understand why the voters in Arkansas, one of the poorest states in the nation, are so against a healthcare plan that will finally give many of them healthcare  coverage and favor cutting spending, which would likely end manysocial programs that benefit Arkansans. It makes me think that the people there don't like Barack Obama, for various reasons, and will oppose anything that they feel represents him.

It could just be because of a genuine philosophical concern with a program that results in an expansion of the government's power and budget. A lot of conservatives want small government, even at the expense of programs that may benefit them.

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

Georgia is not as bad as it could be. If I recall he had a 41% approval rating a few months ago and it's held steady.The changing demographics of Georgia bode well for the Democrats and Obama, but he would certainly lose the state today. 2012 is a different story though...

More significantly, the President has powers that allow him -- if he is at all competent -- to shape the legislative agenda.  He can choose his public appearances largely to his advantage. He can ride the economy and exploit positive changes in foreign policy and any military victories even if he has little involvement in either.

Or he could take a historic, public-perception-shaping moment, like the signing of an unemployment extension bill, and muddy it with a bizarre fired/not fired saga over racial discrimination from the 1980s.

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

Take it elsewhere, kiddies. This is a polling-only zone.

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

Has there ever been an election US history when self-described R's outnumbered D's. I thought was the worst, and that was parity.

2002. Republicans made up 39% of voters according to the VNS; Democrats made up 38%.

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

New Jersey (FDU)

49% Approve
40% Disapprove

The Fairleigh Dickinson University poll of 801 registered voters statewide was conducted by telephone from July 27, 2010, through August 2, 2010, and has a margin of error of +/- 3.5 percentage points.

http://publicmind.fdu.edu/gov1008/

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

The color code does not support purple. It supports red, blue, green, yellow, and orange, and shades thereof. One might not get a true black, but give 10% yellow and you get a shade of white that shows a number or letter.   The shade of purple that I would have to use would be lavender, which leaves connotations irrelevant to this exercise.

Were pbrower to use lavender, he would be suggesting that Minnesota is gay, that Obama is gay, or perhaps most likely, that they are in a gay relationship with each other.

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

Big news -- the last US combat troops are leaving Iraq.

Cheers for getting the last US combat troops out of Iraq!  Jeers for continued combat missions in Iraq.

Wait ... what?

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

Rasmussen Obama (National)

Approve 45%, -2.

Disapprove 54%, +2.


"Strongly Approve" is at 25%, -2.  "Strongly Disapprove" is at 43%, +2.

A strong Obama sample has moved out of the system.

Just curious.  It seems that recently there have been an even number of days showing Obama around 47-48% and those showing him around 44-45%. 

How come every day it goes a little up it must have just been a good Obama sample?  Isn't it just as easy for me to say today's sample is a BAD Obama sample? 

He's not passing judgements on "good" versus "bad" samples, he's stating an obvious fact: That Obama's numbers declined because a strong Obama sample -- that is, one where Obama was viewed favorably -- dropped off the moving average.

Today's sample could be unrepresentative of the average -- or it could be dead on. That's why any analysis here has to be viewed in terms of "ranges" and not solid percentages. Obama has shown himself to be in a somewhat stable net-negative range as of late, with some limited movement back and forth.

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

Because the thread has become rather "hackish" at times.  I'm well aware of the mean and range of the numbers, I'm just wondering how you are interpreting it. 

Dude, this thread is the definition of "hack."

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

He's more unpopular than philandering Governor Mark "Don't cry for me, Argentina!" Sanford? Wow! How quickly people can forget!

Or maybe people just think that failing in governing is worse than failing in your personal life.

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

That map is simply ... demonstrable.

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

GA (Insider Advantage): 35-64

http://www.wsbtv.com/news/24844214/detail.html

Push poll.

(1) Insider Advantage may not be a huge name, but they are non-partisan
(2) That poll was conducted in conjunction with a television station
(3) I don't think you have any idea what a push poll even is
(4) You are ridiculous (in general) and most likely on a dangerous combination of cat drugs

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

29+18+7+47+1=102%

Rounding.

PS to Pbrower: You colored Washington wrong. Should be 30% yellow, according to your key.

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

Nate Silver postulated that a President whose approval rating of 44% nationwide going into the Presidential election had about a 50% chance of winning.

Jesus, will you stop saying this? It's blatantly false. Nate Silver never said this.

Nate Silver postulated that an incumbent who polls in head-to-head matchups at 44% had a 50% chance of winning. The phrase here is head-to-head, which is, of course, not what approval ratings are.

I have no trouble with you creating a model for the 2012 election from these approvals, even though I think it's clearly inaccurate (I mean, look at it). What I have trouble with is you saying that this method comes from Nate Silver. It does not, and it never will. This model is all pbrower2a, and carries absolutely no statistical or intellectual backing from Nate Silver.

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

My favorite part about this thread is how terribly disconnected it is from the rest of the forum.

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

Question: does he have any coattails? 

I'd be oh-so-interested in hearing your take on these upcoming midterm elections.

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

Question: does he have any coattails? 

I'd be oh-so-interested in hearing your take on these upcoming midterm elections.

Changing every day.

Pick a day sometime.

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

Nate Silver had a study at 538.com (no longer there) that showed how incumbent Senators and Governors did between 2006 and 2009, inclusively. He noted that at an approval rating of 44% the incumbent Governor or Senator had roughly a 50% chance of winning re-election, and that the chance of winning dropped off sharply; above 44% the incumbent's chance of winning rose rapidly.

You are either very fond of lying, or too stupid to remember that you've been corrected about this 10 times now.

Never ever has Nate Silver said anything of the sort.

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

Aren't the Fox News polls simply Rasmussen polls that have been ordered by Fox?

Polling is a two-step business. Someone writes the poll questions, and then someone conducts the polls.

In both Rasmussen and Fox, the same people are conducting the polls, though different people are writing the questions. The "writing the questions" part is actually tricky business, and can dramatically swing the results of a poll one way or another.

That being said, this is just Pbrower being Pbrower. There's absolutely no reason to exclude Fox polls. He's just being his usual, cat drugged self.

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

I wonder why Obama is doing so anomalously well in the more urbanized Southern states?  He is polling better in GA and FL than CO or NV.

Black people?

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

Obama only got 39% in 2008 winning like 95% of the black vote, so that's a half-assed explanation.

I dunno, it seems quite likely to me.

Regardless, it never ceases to amaze me that our fave cat drugger can find the silver lining in a poll where 52% strongly disapprove of the president because of his weird "plus 6" fantasy.

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

Obama lost the state 60-39. With the 58-41 spread in approvals, any chance of Obama winning Alabama is slim.  But look at the difference, and it may suggest some trend that bodes ill for the GOP Presidential nominee in 2012.

Alabama was one of the worst states for Obama in 2008, his 45th-best, and he could win it only in about a 45-state landslide.  About the only way that he wins it in something "less" than a 45-state landslide is if he gets out of Afghanistan with no problems remaining.

My seat-of-the-pants estimate of the likelihood of Obama winning Alabama is about 1%. Higher chance than Utah or Wyoming.

More significantly, it fortifies the idea that a 47% approval rating in Georgia isn't out of the question. Except that Greater Atlanta is far bigger than Greater Birmingham, Alabama and Georgia would seem to have similar demographics.

States shift back and forth all the time. If there is any benefit to Obama in Alabama, it is purely a local phenomenon (or one that applies to Alabaman demographics) and not something that's happening nationwide.

If anything, Republicans should be glad that the erosion in their vote is currently happening in safe Republican states. The erosion in the Democrats' vote right now is primarily happening in the midwest (at least for the 2010 elections, which you have to admit are at least somewhat nationalized), and those states were hardly safe for Gore, Kerry, or Obama.

Trends right now favor Republicans. There's no doubt about that. Democrats are unenthused. Half the problem is complacency. The other half of the problem is Obama.

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

PPP has had a string of very pro-Republican polls in the past week, in a number of states.  I'm wondering is there is weighting problem?

...but with whom?