I was expecting Mark Blumenthal to try to spin the Obama Job Approval numbers, and sure enough, he did:
http://www.nationaljournal.com/njonline/mp_20090710_2090.phpFor those not familiar with survey research, let me elucidate, as Mark pulls a couple of fallacies in his “Obama Numbers Follow the Economy” piece in National Journal (July 13, 2009)
First, Mark compares the percentage of independents who voted for Obama according to the Edison national exit poll (2008) against the number of independents who now say they approve of Obama’s job performance in an adult poll from Gallup in June-July of this year. Specifically, according to Edison, 52% voted for Obama in 2008 while according to Gallup, 53% approve of his job performance today.
Now, those in the survey research field can tell you that historically, adult polls tend to show higher approval ratings for Democrats than likely voter or exit (actual voter) polls.
The Rasmussen poll of likely voters (June 28-30, 2009) found that 46% of independents approved of Obama’s job performance and 53% disapprove of his job performance.
You need to compare apples to apples, not oranges Mark!
Second, the exit poll to which Mark refers was taken in November of 2008, while the adult poll from Gallup was taken in June of this year. Now Mark is well aware that historically summer polls are more favorable to Democrats than polls taken the rest of the year. Lou Harris wrote of this several years ago (for those of you who don’t know about Lou Harris, he was John Kennedy’s pollster).
Oh, and here’s what The Vorlon had to say about the matter:
https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=3755.0