The Official Obama Approval Ratings Thread

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

@ Rasmussen today:

50% Approve (+1)
50% Disapprove (-1)

When was Obama last at 50 or above on Rass? What's this bounce in aid of? The taliban leader who was found?

It could be. Note that the captive is the Taliban's top military leader. Such likely throws the Taliban into disarray and makes its defeat more likely.

Good news gets good polling results even if the President has little to do with the cause of the good news. Does he seem to be the sort to try to micro-manage the generals?  Of course we have yet to know the whole story.   

probably more a bump due to Obamacare being out of the spotlight....though the RCP average is still within a point of Obama's low and a new CNN poll has Congress hitting a historic low.

Obama is over a barrel internationally due to the preception of his apology tour appearing as a retreat.  If we lose a single airliner, look for Obama's approval to drop 10 points overnight as he loses the women's vote.  If something worse happens, Obama will all but officially become a lame duck and will have a challenger to the 2012 Dem nomination.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

PPP 2-17-2010
Q12 If the candidates for President in 2012 were
John Thune and Barack Obama, who would
you vote for? If John Thune, press 1. If
Barack Obama, press 2. If you’re undecided,
press 3.
Thune 28%
Obama 46%
Not Sure 26%

Thune is only known by political junkies, so it is surprising Obama only pulled 46% and, IMO, may show the rest of the GOP is damaged goods

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

no, what is going on is that is youre a Jimmy Carter type, one-off military successes dont really help you that much because few believe youre a strong war time leader and many think you are naive...at the other end of the spectrum, if you're a General Patton type, you get the full benefit of military success.

Obama is more like Carter than Patton, so he doesn't get much of a bump from a single event, even when he hits a home run....Bush43 was closer to Patton, so he got a bigger bump when Saddam was caught.

IMO

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It's not something the electorate cares about enough.

well, if that is the case, then we have surely lost the war on terror.

But, IMO, another thing that is hurting Obama's bounce is that fact that:

1) Pakistan has been shown to have been in bed with OBL and
2) the overall world Muslim community aint partying with us over the death of OBL.

...so, the American people are getting an eye full of the fact OBL represented a much larger slice of Islam than the liberal PC police led us to believe for nearly 10 years.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

The ironic thing is that you have a lot in common with the average Islamic extremist.

[ ...here goes another wasted question...]

what exactly do we have in common, besides the fact I am also a firm believer (though not the same belief)?

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

The ironic thing is that you have a lot in common with the average Islamic extremist.

[ ...here goes another wasted question...]

what exactly do we have in common, besides the fact I am also a firm believer (though not the same belief)?

The desire to destroy anyone who disagrees with your socially communistic views.

if that were so, you wouldnt still be alive

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

I'd like to thank the resident Forum haters for proving me right. If going in and killing bin Laden (in a nuclear Pakistan) isn't enough to prove you have the balls to be commander in chief, I don't know what is. Being a "strong and decisive leader" shouldn't be about dressing up like a cowboy and fudging a John Wayne accent.

well, if we're gonna talk John Wayne, can I at least slip in a little Janet Leigh action into this thread, because there aint any part of that girl's body that wasnt real:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3BLlhBWKcc

unfortunately, cant find a clip of where she pistol whips him with the butt of a revolver....it was quite sexy...and after taking a pistol whipping, Wayne remarks, "You sure know your stuff, lady!"

oh, almost forgot...yeah, totally agree with your post.  good job you did, it was spot on and full stop

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

i really do think there are two battling undercurrents within obamas bump, or lack thereof:

1)  one is the victory of killing OBL and the very cool manner in which it was done
2)  the realization that all our efforts and all our PC hasnt done a thing to bring the Muslim street into the fold of civil civilizations.  In fact, the lack of joy within the Muslim world over the death of OBL, coupled with the failed Green revolution in Iran, and the Arab Spring, has made more and more Americans realize that we were never going to be able to win over their hearts and minds.

and, remember, it was only a very few weeks ago that the press was embracing Islam and painting Christians as the tyrants, which shocked a lot of Americans.

So, Obamas approval may be somewhat wide, but in many places, its an inch deep, and the shallower the water, the faster it flows - it wouldnt take much imagination to think up a geopolitical event that would drive Obamas rating into the mid 30's

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

I was one of those predicting just a small and temporary bounce, but those Rasmussen numbers seem quite ridiculous.

Obama's had a big runup in the Ras poll in the week PRIOR to the OBL killing...this runup is already reflected in the numbers.  so Ras is not saying Obama has not improved, it is say Obama's improvement was already taking place in the week prior to the killing.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

Gallup at 38%. New low.

not for long

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

Gallup:

31% Approve (-7)
63% Disapprove (+8)

is this a joke?!

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

Gallup:

31% Approve (-7)
63% Disapprove (+8)

is this a joke?!

It's Gallup, what do you think ?

I can't see how they would drop that quickly...do you have a link?

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

The response to Hurricane Irene will soon matter far more.

response to basically a non event?

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

Gallup:

31% Approve (-7)
63% Disapprove (+8)

It's not up on their site yet.  They've also been known to get typos.

well, if you two are playing a joke, I'm not going to find it funny

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

Gallup:

31% Approve (-7)
63% Disapprove (+8)

It's not up on their site yet.  They've also been known to get typos.

well, if you two are playing a joke, I'm not going to find it funny

I could swear, for a few seconds these were the numbers I saw ...

ha ha...not funny.  31 is a totally different political reality than 38, because at this point in time 31 would not only be bad news for Obama, it would be a serious bad omen for his successor.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

back to the gallup 31 pc rumor...I think the headlines of such a quick drop could cause social unrest in america, and not among obamas supporters, but simply because it would mean a quick and radical shift, showing people were losing faith in government...that is why I didn't think it was funny at all, in fact it would e very troubling 

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

back to the gallup 31 pc rumor...I think the headlines of such a quick drop could cause social unrest in america, and not among obamas supporters, but simply because it would mean a quick and radical shift, showing people were losing faith in government...that is why I didn't think it was funny at all, in fact it would e very troubling 

They've run lower numbers for other presidents.

true, but that quick a drop, from 38 to 31, in this politcal climate could be a precursor to the riots Ron Paul predicted....which is what alarmed me - the only way Ron Paul gets elected is if there is mass chaos

also, if we are in a double dip come next summer and it is clear obama is going to lose, Rick Perry aint exactly a beacon of hope and we could see social unrest in the US

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

I don't think there ever was that cause and effect.  Unrest might cause a president's numbers to drop, but a president's dropping numbers don't cause unrest.

not the news itself, just the underlying current that would be behind such a quick drop in approval.  at this point in time (with really no major news story), a rapid mood swing reflected in such a quick drop would be very bad news for both parties and for the country in general.  it would be a sign that the cohesiveness that binds us together as Americans was coming unravelled.

needless to say, I was alarmed when I saw the quick drop to 31...made me want to go out and buy ammo and stock up on canned goods

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

I'm not sold that it is getting worse anymore. Growth in Q3 was way, waaay better than anyone predicted, and undercut the doom and gloomers who predicted a recession in 2012. For there to be a recession in 2012, growth will have to collapse now (Q4) and also in Q1, or in Q1 and Q2. It could still happen I guess, in Q1, but I'm not seeing it for the current quarter.

since when have I been labeled a doom and gloomer?  and how does a rearview snapshot of 2011Q3 growth undercut forward projections of a recession in 2012?  (for the record, ECRI is predicted negative GDP growth by 2012Q1)
 
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It seems we are reverting back to the 2009-2010 narrative, that the economy is slowly improving and that the unemployment rate is dropping at an agonizingly slow rate. At the time of the 2010 midterm elections, the rate was at 10.x%; it will likely not be above 8.5% for election day 2012 if we continue to see growth rates of 2.5%-3% per quarter like we just had.

try 9.6

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

We still very well could have negative growth in Q1 2012, but Q4 should be somewhat decent, which makes it hard to see what will cause the trend to change. I feel better about the economy than I did a few months back.

half the uptick in Q3 was due to increase spending on electricity (due to the heat wave) and medical services...and real personal income decreased by 1.7% in Q3 after increasing 0.6% in Q2

so, it really doesnt matter if GDP increased by 1% or 2.5% or 5% in Q3...the report sucked and had very little in it that was sustainable for growth and job creation.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

It could be that people's opinion about the state of the GOP primary is subconsciously influencing their approval of Obama.

yep...the Cain scandal is helping Obama...and Libya