The Official Obama Approval Ratings Thread

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For Perry to win New York or California, the economy would have to be in complete freefall. With Romney, maybe he could pull it out since people do see him as some economic master or whatever. Even with Romney we would have to see unemployment pushing close to 10% though. If unemployment is still at 9.1-9.3%, we are looking at a close Obama loss at best for the Republicans. The battleground would still be the Midwest, four corners states and the Mid-Atlantic.

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Calm down buddy. I think I made it quite clear what I thought about the Republican's chances in California, considering who they are about to nominate. JJ thinks Romney or Perry could almost win in California, or New York, but as usual he is wrong. But you put in a candidate who talks clearly and says we need to raise taxes but at the same reform entitlements, and add in a worsening economy and you have that sort of a victory. And yes I do think the economy needs to do much worse than just create 0 jobs for this scenario to occur.

And don't for a moment think a victory like this would be some great endorsement of the GOP. They could just as easily get thrown out in the next election. That's just how things are these days with the electorate.

Every single Republican candidate including the so called moderate Huntsman ruled out even a 10 to 1 ratio of spending cuts to tax increases.

The Paul Ryan plan which 95%+ of the GOP Congress voted for cuts taxes for the wealthy substantially.

I'm not saying the eventual GOP candidate isn't going to move somewhat to the right from the far right after the primaries, but to suggest that the GOP candidate may campaign on tax increases on the wealthy is just crazy.

There is a 0.0% chance of that happening, how do you not know that by now?

Now they may propose tax increases on the poor like Paul Ryan's plan does, but that would be a just another negative on their election odds.

I think I already mentioned the Republicans refuse to nominate a sensible candidate.

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For Perry to win New York or California, the economy would have to be in complete freefall. With Romney, maybe he could pull it out since people do see him as some economic master or whatever. Even with Romney we would have to see unemployment pushing close to 10% though. If unemployment is still at 9.1-9.3%, we are looking at a close Obama loss at best for the Republicans. The battleground would still be the Midwest, four corners states and the Mid-Atlantic.

You'll have to define freefall.

I'm saying, a double dip recession, with greater than 9% employment, and Rubio on the ticket, you are looking a a map like the one I posted.

The midwest is already a battleground.

Freefall meaning credit markets seizing up, stock markets falling 500 points everyday and -500,000 payroll numbers. End of 2008 basically. You have to be a little more specific too. You really think Perry is going to win New York with 9.2% unemployment? That's absurd. Although when you start going above 10% unemployment, or at least payroll numbers as bad as I stated, then weird things can start happening. Still it would be a stretch for Perry to do well in the Northeast or the Pacific coast.

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This is my "The economy has improved, unemployment drops to 8%, the R nominee is Perry/-not Rubio/-Romney, and we're not in a realignment" map:

Dude, if unemployment drops to 8%, with Perry as his opponent Obama will win both NC and FL. You can take that one to the bank. And NH? Have you lost it?

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Right, but it seems downright WEIRD that Obama can somehow be in the mid 40s with the economy the way it is. Doesn't it?

If the election were held today, I would think Obama gets about 48-49% vs Perry and maybe 47-48% vs Romney. Electorally speaking, Obama-Perry is too close to call (Perry being the slight favorite tbh) and a slight Romney victory. Against someone like Bachmann, Obama would win even in these conditions. IIRC Bush was hanging out around 48-49% when he was re-elected. Though if it was different please feel free to correct me.

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Ouch on those California numbers. PPIC is pretty well respected, though I forget how they did in 2010.

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Ayres, McHenry & Associates (R):

50% Approve
47% Disapprove

Results are based on 1000 weighted cases, Margin of Error = ±3.10 percent. Totals may not equal 100 percent due to rounding.

http://www.resurgentrepublic.com/system/assets/436/original/RR_Nov_2011_Year_Out_Toplines.pdf

An interesting poll.

They ask the "approval question" quite deep into the survey after having presented the GOP and Dem positions on a variety of issues.

Because of this, this poll is "kinda" a very mild version of a "push poll" - I am not saying this in a negative way BTW, in campaigns it is standard procedure to present a variety of issues and see if the presentation of these issues impacts the "horse race question" as a way of testing campaign themes.

Given that it has been quite a while since Obama has a net positive approval rating in any poll, this poll suggests, at least as presented in this survey, that Obama can make up a bit of ground "on the issues" and that the policy issues , at least as framed in this poll,  are more popular than he is personally.

I think this should have been obvious by looking at how well Hillary Clinton does in head to head match ups against the Republican field. Not a lot of polls have come out with that match up though, but it's still very interesting.

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If nothing out of the ordinary happens with the economy, I have a feeling Obama wins a close one. Though if Romney is the nominee, he would have a good chance of winning, but again it will be close. If Europe implodes then who knows what happens but I doubt Obama can recover from that. If the economy suddenly starts creating on average 200-300k jobs per month then Obama wins easily. If the economy creates just enough jobs for the unemployment rate to remain steady or fall very slowly, it's going to be a close one. This is the state the economy has been in for more than a year now.

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Let's put it this way. You've been married to someone for almost 4 years and have to make a decision as to whether or not you want to be locked into another 4 years but aren't sure.  Are you going to put yourself through 4 more years of the same if you aren't completely and totally sure that you'll be happy?  If Obama is 49% or better on election night, he'll win.  At 48% he's talking about winning without the popular vote.  Any less than that and Ralph Nader would have to take votes from the GOP or there is a third party candidate like Ron Paul. The same rules apply to Obama as any other incumbent since they started taking polls. As for right now, it's February.

I think Bush was around 47-50% around election time in 2004 and won by about 3 points. So on average Obama needs to be around 46-49% to win I would think. I think if there was a snap election now, with a month to campaign, Obama would barely win against Romney, by a few more points against Santorum and would destroy Gingrich and Paul. If he can more or less keep the numbers he has right now through election day, he should be able to win.

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Let's put it this way. You've been married to someone for almost 4 years and have to make a decision as to whether or not you want to be locked into another 4 years but aren't sure.  Are you going to put yourself through 4 more years of the same if you aren't completely and totally sure that you'll be happy?  If Obama is 49% or better on election night, he'll win.  At 48% he's talking about winning without the popular vote.  Any less than that and Ralph Nader would have to take votes from the GOP or there is a third party candidate like Ron Paul. The same rules apply to Obama as any other incumbent since they started taking polls. As for right now, it's February.

I think Bush was around 47-50% around election time in 2004 and won by about 3 points. So on average Obama needs to be around 46-49% to win I would think. I think if there was a snap election now, with a month to campaign, Obama would barely win against Romney, by a few more points against Santorum and would destroy Gingrich and Paul. If he can more or less keep the numbers he has right now through election day, he should be able to win.

I think Bush was at 54% on election night as Clinton was in 1996.

Umm....no. Which poll are you talking about, and it mostly certainly was not the average.

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Yeah, early exit polls are not the most accurate. Really, exit polls in general tend not to be very accurate. Went back and looked at Gallup and the weeks before the election Bush was jumping around from 48-51%. And one thing to look out for, and perhaps the reason why Gallup seems to be so unfriendly to Obama, is that Hispanics don't approve of the job he has done that much but at the end of the day will vote for him. Turnout could be something to look out for though.

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The rise of the internet helping the GOP? Dems usually enjoying a money advantage? Uh....

Interesting analysis otherwise. I also think this race is very tight, though I do think Obama's approval numbers underestimate how he would do against Romney or any other generic Republican (version 2012). There are groups out there that do not approve of the job Obama has done but voting for the Republicans is not a viable option.

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After the Reagan Revolution of the early-80s, there were only two recessions an, d both were extraordinarily mild (the early 1990s and early 2000s).  That is why the Democrats think they can get away with claiming that the 2007-09 recession was "different, worse than every other recession".

Americans over 50 have an obligation to tell young people, that no, the recent recession was not substantially worse than either the 1973-75 or the 1980-82 ones.  The difference is that those recessions were followed by ROBUST recoveries.  GDP growth in 1976-78 averaged 5.5% and in 1983-85 averaged 6.0%.  Obama's GDP growth, 2010-12 (with two quarters left to go) has averaged a miserable 1.9%

1.) The early 90s recession started because of the end of the Cold War, which saw the demise of a lot of defense industry jobs. 90s prosperity was due to the computer revolution and the dot.com bubble.
2.) The dot.com bubble recession saw the demise of most dot.com companies, and was mainly a market recession, though unemployment breifly reached 6%. Unlike the 90s, wages and family income never increased all that much. Not to mention the housing bubble was in it's infancy, which helped the market a lot.
3.) This recession alomst saw the demise of AIG and major investment banks. Without the bailouts and federal takeovers, it would have been another depression. There's a reason people and economists called it the worse financial collapse since the Great Depression, and this was before Obama became president.

Please continue to spin though.

Since you didn't dispute anything I said, I'm not sure how to respond.

To "spin" again, I say that yes, the 2007-09 recession was long and deep -- but it was not substantially worse than either the 1973-75 or 1980-82 recessions.  The fact that there were (real and threatened) bank collapses in 2007-09 did not make it worse.  Anyway, the government has now given so much money to the banks that interest rates are, incredibly, going negative!  This is because so few Americans have the confidence to take out loans.

The fact is that all these recessions reached their deepest points in the first quarters of their last year -- in 1Q '75, 1Q '82, and 1Q '09.  That makes it easy to look at the next three calendar years for comparison.  From 1976-78, GNP growth averaged 5.5%; in 1983-85, 6.0%, now (with two quarters to go), 1.9%.  This is not how recessions are supposed to end. 

Even the mild recessions of the 1990s and early 2000s had better recoveries:  In 1992-94, annual growth averaged 3.8%; in 2003-05, 3.2%.

Btw, the cause of the financial collapse in 2008 was the housing bubble bursting.  And the cause of the housing bubble was government policies to "close the racial gap in home ownership".  Obama (1) supported these policies as a U.S. Senator, 2005-2008, and (2) has not ended them as president.

This is a recession caused by plummeting house prices which affected nearly every home owners wealth. This meant they started deleveraging by not taking on other loans and increasing their savings rate. This is not the same as other recessions. When people need to reduce their debt load, the recovery is meek like we have seen. Any economist will tell you a recovery after a housing crash is going to be slow.

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Yeah, Obama's gonna lose by 20 points now.

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They should have Bill Clinton speak on national TV every week.

Yeah, just buy air time for 30 minutes each week in the swing states and let Clinton explain sh**t.

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Does Rasmussen still have a R+4 sample?

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I guess we have to see over the next few days if it sticks. If it does, Romney is in huge trouble.

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I highly doubt just this debate will cause Romney to lead. But if this becomes a pattern, and the people think Obama has nothing new to offer them while Romney keeps playing to the middle, watch out.

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I highly doubt just this debate will cause Romney to lead. But if this becomes a pattern, and the people think Obama has nothing new to offer them while Romney keeps playing to the middle, watch out.

The most effective thing Mittens said in my mind, with the voters who will decide the election, is that he worked for bipartisan consensus with Romneycare, and Obama didn't with Obamacare, and that approach can bear poison fruit. All major pieces of social legislation in the past have had important bipartisan support - all of them. And yes, Mittens is playing the middle hard now. It must be a relief for him that the primaries are over. That period was absolutely horrible.

Of course Obama's response should be that no Republican wanted to play ball with him, but he wasn't able to make that argument at all during the debate. He has an even better case with the debt debacle of a couple years back (when Nancy was not calling the shots), and he failed there as well. Truman won by running against an obstructionist congress, Obama must do the same.

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I highly doubt just this debate will cause Romney to lead. But if this becomes a pattern, and the people think Obama has nothing new to offer them while Romney keeps playing to the middle, watch out.

The most effective thing Mittens said in my mind, with the voters who will decide the election, is that he worked for bipartisan consensus with Romneycare, and Obama didn't with Obamacare, and that approach can bear poison fruit. All major pieces of social legislation in the past have had important bipartisan support - all of them. And yes, Mittens is playing the middle hard now. It must be a relief for him that the primaries are over. That period was absolutely horrible.

Of course Obama's response should be that no Republican wanted to play ball with him, but he wasn't able to make that argument at all during the debate. He has an even better case with the debt debacle of a couple years back (when Nancy was not calling the shots), and he failed there as well. Truman won by running against an obstructionist congress, Obama must do the same.

Well actually Obama didn't play much ball with the Pubs on Obamacare at all, walked out on Boehner because he could not even suck up using the chained CPI for SS payment adjustments, ignored Simpson Bowles, that had a bipartisan majority in support of something, and indeed does not talk much to anybody. Dems in Congress bitch all the time what a loner and unapproachable Obama is.  I suspect he holds most of the political class in contempt. That is my honest opinion.

Obama has his talents. Being a consensus builder, and finding the middle, is not one of them however. It is just not within him. Mittens should play this card hard from now until the election. His base will have to suck it up.

Regarding Obamacare, it is just so similar to Republican plans that I don't understand why more Republicans didn't sign on to it. I don't think there was much reasoning to the opposition to it, which is why you saw the raving nonsense about "kill the bill" and all that. Of course I think the Wyden-Bennett bill would have been better, although much more politically difficult to get through, but you cannot criticize Obamacare as being too liberal or leftist. It just doesn't make sense. I guess the Democrats were more concerned about pleasing their own moderates than reaching out to the Republicans? It's all drama really, I don't see what Republicans would have wanted in reality that they didn't get with the bill, except credit of course. And that is worth way more than passing good bills in today's media driven political world.

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The very low penalty for not carrying insurance? Requiring most businesses to offer insurance is a bad move as well since we should move away from employer provided healthcare, though I would make them pay into the system with higher payroll taxes. It evens the playing field between big and small businesses

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If his approvals stay around there, that's at least a 4 point win.