Foxpoll:IsObamarebounding? postedat

Fox poll: Is Obama rebounding?

posted at 10:41 am on August 14, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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Well, sort of. Barack Obama’s poll numbers have cratered of late, so any movement upward will look like a bounce — and as the Washington Post notes, there is a hook for that conclusion. According to the Fox poll, about two-thirds of Americans agree with Obama’s decision to order air strikes on ISIS to slow their roll toward the Kurdish autonomous zone:

The good news for President Obama: The American people are very much behind his decision to launch airstrikes against extremists in Iraq.

The bad news: They still think he’s really weak on foreign policy.

A new Fox News poll has a rare bit of praise for Obama’s conduct in world affairs, with Americans approving 65-23 of his decision to launch airstrikes in Iraq.

But the same poll shows that, when it comes to foreign policy in general and basically every major overseas conflict — including Iraq — Obama is still in pretty rough shape.

Actually, his job approval numbers did bounce back, at least a little. Obama gets a 42/49, still underwater, but his disapproval number is back below a majority for the first time since May, and only the second time in the past year. Two months ago, that number was 41/54, and in March it was 38/54.

However, on everything else Obama scores majority disapprovals, even while rebounding slightly in some categories. He gets a 43/51 on the economy, which is better than last month’s 40/57. On foreign policy, he scores an abysmal 35/53, but that beats 36/56 and 32/60 in Fox’s last two polls. Obama has edged up slightly on health care from 39/58 in early June to 42/53 today. Only on immigration and Israel does Obama remain mired at his nadir; he gets 33/57 on the former (from 34/58) and 30/54 on the latter (29/56 in June).

What to make of this small bounce? The airstrikes in Iraq show some spark of leadership from a President who mainly seems adrift and disengaged from events. That perception might be enough to have moved the needle and rebuilt a little confidence in Obama’s stewardship of the nation. However, this is the only poll thus far showing any kind of improvement, even as small as this is, and most of the changes are either within the margin of error or just outside of it.

Bottom line: Obama remains “in rough shape,” as the Post’s Aaron Blake concludes. He may, however, have established his floor of unpopularity, unless Obama boots another crisis.

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MaristpollshowsObamadrivingmidtermvoteto

Marist poll shows Obama driving midterm vote to GOP

posted at 12:01 pm on August 12, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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Midterm elections usually end up as referendums on the current President, and sixth-year midterms especially so. Will that be the case in November with Barack Obama? According to a new poll from Marist and McClatchy, yes — and Democrats will not like the outcome. By a ten-point spread, Obama incentivizes voters to go Republican more than Democratic:

President Barack Obama is dragging down his party and hurting the prospects of fellow Democrats as they head into midterm elections that will determine who controls Congress, according to a new McClatchy-Marist poll.

Obama is beset by problems at home and abroad. Just 40 percent of voters approve of the way he’s doing his job, tying his worst mark in three years and the second worst of his presidency.

Just 39 percent approve of the way he’s dealing with the economy and only 33 percent approve of how he’s dealing with foreign policy, the worst of his years in office.

By 42-32 percent, voters say their opinions of Obama make them more likely to vote this fall for a Republican than for a Democrat.

That’s actually twice the gap in the generic Congressional ballot, which stacks up 43/38 for Republicans — a very bad figure for Democrats. The GOP has gained 11 points in the gap since April, when Democrats led 48/42, which strongly suggests that the momentum has shifted in a big way as the general-election campaign season approaches. What’s more, it’s also pretty clear that no matter how poorly the GOP polls (only 22% approve of Republicans in Congress, as opposed to 32% for Democrats), the need to rebuke Barack Obama takes precedence for voters. Among independents, the GOP has a 14-point lead in the generic Congressional ballot, 40/26, and Obama makes independents likelier to vote for Republicans than Democrats by an almost 2:1 margin, 41/22.

So yes, this midterm will be all about Barack Obama, and not about income inequality or free contraception. Having an overall job approval rating of 40/52 is bad enough (worst since September 2011), but on issues that matter to voters, Obama may be doing worse than that topline figure suggests. His 39/58 on the economy is his worst showing since July 2013, and his 33/61 on foreign policy is Obama’s worst ever in the Marist series. He gets only a 30/55 on the Gaza war, and 32/51 on Ukraine. Even his personal favorability has plummeted; it’s now at 43/51, his worst showing in this series as well.

It’s a disaster for Democrats, and it doesn’t appear that it will get better any time soon. Obama might have mitigated the damage with a renewed sense of mission and engagement in the face of multiple crises, but instead he opted to go on vacation. Normally I’d push back against those who gripe about presidential vacations, but as I argue in my column today at The Week, this time critics have a point:

Three years ago, he proudly declared that he had kept his promise to get all troops out of the country, and two years ago campaigned on the fact that Mitt Romney would have kept U.S. troops there had he been president. In January of this year, Obama infamously dismissed ISIS as “a jayvee team” to al Qaeda, and shrugged them off as “jihadists who are engaged in various local power struggles and disputes.”

Meanwhile, two weeks ago, the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency told an audience that the U.S. is less safe than it was “several years ago,” and that rather than being on the run, the al Qaeda ideology “sadly feels like it’s exponentially grown” during that time.

On Saturday, with Marine One in the background, standing by to whisk him away to Martha’s Vineyard, Obama announced that he had ordered the U.S. military to conduct airstrikes on ISIS to prevent a potential genocide. He then proceeded to claim that removing all troops from Iraq wasn’t his decision, but was a situation forced on him by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Needless to say, the dramatic cognitive disconnects in Obama’s narrative don’t do much to maintain even the current low confidence in his leadership, let alone repair the damage. While Obama can certainly run the American response from his vacation retreat to the genocide unfolding in real time, his insistence on doing so reinforces the conclusion that the president isn’t taking the ISIS threat seriously.

Most Americans would expect that the sudden epiphany about the genocidal threat posed by ISIS would have a president working overtime. This time, at least, the need to boost confidence in the president’s leadership should have outweighed his legitimate need for some downtime outside the Beltway bubble.

Americans are less and less impressed with Obama, and going absent in August isn’t likely to make them feel any better about him as Commander in Chief, either.

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MSNBC:“Totaldisconnect”betweenObama’srhetoriconeconomy

MSNBC: “Total disconnect” between Obama’s rhetoric on economy and reality for voters

posted at 2:01 pm on August 6, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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Worth a watch, especially on this particular network even though Morning Joe offers much more reality than most of the rest of MSNBC’s schedule. Today’s reminder of reality comes from Wall Street Journal’s White House correspondent Carol Lee, who points out that the sunny rhetoric from Barack Obama and his administration has a “total disconnect” to the reality for most Americans, as seen in the latest NBC/WSJ poll.

Time for another pivot?

“The President was campaigning, raising money in California a few weeks ago,” Lee notes, “and he was saying, ‘People feel better than they did five years ago’ … some of the folks who participated in this poll explicitly said that they don’t feel better than they did five years ago.” Lee pointed out one particularly bad metric in the poll, which was “the 79% of people who think their kids’ future is not going to be better than their own — I mean, that’s a huge number.”

Actually, the number is 76% rather than 79%, either of which is a huge number. In fact, it’s the highest in the NBC/WSJ poll series, far exceeding the 57% in June 2009 at the start of the recovery, and the 56% in September 2008 when the Great Recession sharply deepened. The last time this series asked that question was May 2012, and at that time 63% felt that the next generation would do worse than the current one. Today’s reading is the highest since September 1993, when the US had already begun a much more significant recovery than the Obama recovery of today.

Interestingly, though, the pessimism isn’t quite as apparent in the other question on America’s future. Six in ten believe America is in a state of decline, as opposed to 38% who don’t, but that’s hardly the worst result in the series. In September 2008, again at the crest of the Great Recession, 74% thought America was in a state of decline. By January 2011, though, the question got a 54/42 for decline, so the 60/38 shows that even that wan optimism has ebbed away a bit.

On the other hand, 50% now think the economy is recovering, although 23% believe it’s only doing so for the wealthy. Bragging about the stock market probably won’t help Obama on this score, in other words. Only 27% believe that Obamanomics is lifting all boats in this recovery, and 47% don’t think we’re improving at all.

Lee and Joe Scarborough are right about the “total disconnect” between the White House rhetoric and the reality on the ground for most Americans. That will make it difficult for Democrats to talk about the economy in the midterm elections, even though it’s by far and away the top priority for voters in this cycle, without looking like complete shills for an incompetent and out-of-touch administration. That’s why they’re planning to talk about immigration (also a disaster for Obama in this poll, by the way), contraception, climate change, and pretty much everything else that voters don’t care about in order to distract them from the failure of Obama on the economy. That only worked, though, when Obama was on the ticket — and after the last twenty months of incompetence, that sale won’t work a second time anyway.

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Obamaapprovalfallsto40/54inNBC/WSJpoll

Obama approval falls to 40/54 in NBC/WSJ poll

posted at 10:01 am on August 6, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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How low can he go? Senate Democrats won’t be fans of this new version of “Limbo Rock,” because it’s Barack Obama’s plummeting approval numbers that have them in limbo, wondering whether they will end up on the wrong end of another electoral wave in November. The new NBC/WSJ poll puts the President’s approval number at 40%, its lowest in the series, and the shift is coming from Democrats themselves:

As for the politicians measured in the NBC/WSJ poll, President Obama’s overall job rating stands at an all-time low of 40 percent, a one-point drop from June.

That decline comes from slightly lower support from Democrats and African-American respondents. …

And Obama’s favorable/unfavorable rating remains upside down at 40 percent positive, 47 percent negative.

The takeaway there is that Americans are no longer separating Obama from his job performance. That may be because his attacks on his opposition have become increasingly personal and whiny, complaining about “hatin’ on” him, and so on. Or it may just be a realization after nearly six years that Obama just can’t be separated from his office in the same way that Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and even George W. Bush could be. That sharp decline in personal favorability no longer buffers Obama from the failures of his administration.

How bad is that personal favorability? Even the overall number doesn’t really do justice to the collapse. Very negative now exceeds very positive by eleven points, 22/33, the worst since December in the middle of the ObamaCare crisis, when the overall was 42/46. In April, it was 24/28 and 44/41 overall. Even during the midterm elections four years ago when the Republican wave was forming, the worst Obama got was a 26/27 on the passionate ends of the spectrum in August with a 46/41 overall.

The full job rating for Obama is 40/54, both of which are new records for Obama in this series. The 54% disapproval ties Obama’s ratings in March and December, during the ObamaCare rollout debacle. Disapproval has now been a majority since late October, after only flirting with it twice before then during his second term.

On the economy, Obama gets an almost-identical 42/53, which actually has been an improvement of late; it had been 39/58 in December and 41/56 in March. Foreign policy, though, has been a disaster, as Obama fell again to a new low of 36/60. In December 2012, Obama got a 52/40, and last December it was 44/48. He’s been cratering ever since. And on the crises that have erupted on the foreign-policy front, Obama flunks across the board:

• MH17 shootdown: 26/37 satisfaction with US actions
• Ukraine/Russia conflict: 23/43
• Syria: 18/37
• Gaza war: 17/45
• Rise of ISIS: 14/42
• Immigration crisis: 11/64

Obama had better think twice about making the midterms about immigration. That’s about as complete of a vote of no confidence in an American head of state as it gets.

By the way, while Democrats attempt to rebrand the “war on women” for the midterms, this is what NBC found that people actually care about:

Even though the recession ended years ago and even though the U.S. economy has created 200,000-plus jobs over the past six months, a plurality of Americans – 49 percent – believe the economy is still in a recession. (However, that percentage is the lowest it’s been since the Great Recession began, and 50 percent of respondents believe the economy is improving.)

What’s more, a combined 71 percent say the recession personally impacted them “a lot” or “just some,” and 64 percent say it’s still having an effect on them.

Then there are these numbers in the poll:

• 40 percent say someone in their household lost a job in the past five years;
• 27 percent say they have more than $5,000 in student-loan debt for either themselves or their children;
• 20 percent have more than $2,000 in credit card debt they are unable to pay off month to month;
• and 17 percent say they have a parent or a child over 21 years old living with them for financial or health reasons.

“People are continuing to tell us what ways [the Great Recession] is still impacting them today,” said GOP pollster Bill McInturff. “Those stories are pretty grim.”

Oddly, it’s also what Democrats don’t want to discuss, too … except for the occasional pivot to distract from the latest Obama administration failure.

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Obama hits 40% approval in AP poll, loses ground on foreign policy

Obamahits40%approvalinAPpoll,loses

CNN:Obamaapprovalholdingsteady…at42%

CNN: Obama approval holding steady … at 42%

posted at 5:21 pm on July 23, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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From the Lipstick on the Pig Department, CNN reports that its latest polling shows “no Katrina moment” for Barack Obama. That, however, is rather cold comfort, as even CNN allows, because the steady level of the President’s job approval rating puts him underwater by double digits. The only good news is that the approval-disapproval levels haven’t shifted southward in the wake of the VA scandal, ISIS’ expansion, and the escalations in Gaza and Ukraine:

President Barack Obama’s poll numbers are nothing to brag about, but there’s little evidence he has suffered so far this year a “Katrina moment” that caused his predecessor’s numbers to plummet.

A new CNN/ORC International survey indicates that public opinion of the President has barely budged in the wake of new challenges that Obama has faced this year.

According to the poll, which was released Wednesday, the President’s approval rating among Americans stands at 42%. That’s not great, but it’s basically unchanged since March.

Only 42% believe that Obama can manage the government effectively. Again, nothing to celebrate, but it’s virtually unchanged from the 43% who felt that way in March.

That may not mean that Obama hasn’t suffered a “Katrina moment,” though. It just changes when it may have occurred. From  late 2011 to mid-2013, the CNN series on Obama’s job approval mostly put it at either a majority or plurality, with only a rare plurality for disapproval and never outside of the margin of error. As late as May 2013, Obama’s approval rating was 53/45 — in a survey taken right before the exposure of both the IRS and NSA scandals. One month later, it flipped to 45/54 and has been underwater outside of the MOE since, with majority disapproval every poll. The trend on leadership has much fewer data points, but exhibits a similar trend. Independents have his job approval at 34/62, and he’s even estranged women at 45/52 and young voters (18-34) narrowly at 45/49.

Interestingly, Obama’s other personal qualities seem to be holding up a little better, but still should have Democrats worried — especially on how voters relate to their party’s leader. On the question of whether Obama “generally agrees with you on issues you care about,” Obama dropped to 43/56, narrowly the worst rating ever (was 44/56 in the wake of the ObamaCare rollout debacle). In May of last year, it was 51/47. The relentless focus on issue non-sequiturs over the last several months seems to have taken its toll on Obama, and other Democrats still talking about a “war on women” and income inequality should take notice of that trend in particular. For women, that’s now 45/53, and among independents it’s an abysmal 35/63.

He’s also dropped to 46/53 on “shares your values,” the lowest rating ever and the first time Obama’s been underwater on this question when the entire sample was surveyed on it. Among women, it’s 46/52, and independents it’s 39/60, slightly better than the questions above but still horrid. He’s still carrying the youth vote at 52/46 but losing every other age demo decisively, and every income demo as well.

CNN suggests that ObamaCare may be gaining more support, but that’s a narrow reading of the data, too:

More than half the public says Obamacare has helped either their families or others across the country, although less than one in five Americans say they have personally benefited from the health care law, according to a new national poll.

A CNN/ORC International survey also indicates that a majority of Americans oppose the Affordable Care Act, but that some of that opposition is from people who don’t think the measure goes far enough.

Yes, and … that’s always been the case. As far as the trend goes, there isn’t one. Eighteen percent think their family is better off with the law, which is exactly what it was in September 2010 and one point off from September 2013 (17%). Thirty-five percent think their family is worse off, slightly down from 40% last September but almost within the MOE, and just two points off from September 2010′s 37%. That’s not improvement — it’s stasis. In fact, the only real trend seen in this series is a decline in perception of improvement for others — from 43% in March 2010 to 35% today, while “not help anyone” has gone from 29% when the ACA passed Congress to 44% today.

ObamaCare fares similarly when asked as approval/disapproval, too. It gets a 40/59, about mid-range for the series and almost identical to March’s 39/57. Women oppose it 42/57, as do 18-34 year olds, and independents rate it at 34/63. Those earning under $50,000 a year, who should be the target demo for the bill, oppose it by 20 points, 39/59.

If this poll result from ObamaCare is the Great Democratic Hope for the midterms, they’d better start investing in crying towels now while they’re cheap.

Update: Guy Benson offers his own take on the poll, especially on the idea that this is in any way positive about ObamaCare.

Update: Fixed careless subject-verb error in final sentence.

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PoliticopollshowspublicunimpressedwithHillary’sState

Politico poll shows public unimpressed with Hillary’s State Department performance

posted at 9:21 am on July 21, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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Reviews panned Hillary Clinton’s memoir Hard Choices – and critics slammed her book tour even more. Defenders of the presumed Democratic presidential frontrunner claimed that the few weeks of stumbles and gaffes would long be forgotten by the time Clinton ran for President. The same could be said about her tenure at State, according to a new poll from Politico. Only 14% rate her tenure at State as “excellent,” and only 42% give it a positive rating overall:

A majority of voters are unimpressed with Hillary Clinton’s performance as secretary of state, according to a new POLITICO poll.

Just 14 percent described her time at State — she served four years ending in February 2013 — as “excellent,” while 28 percent defined it as “good.” Twenty-one percent called it “fair,” and 32 percent rated her performance “poor.” Six percent weren’t sure or declined to answer. The survey of likely voters in states and districts with the most competitive House and Senate races was conducted this month as Clinton traveled around the country to promote her new memoir, “Hard Choices,” and discuss her time as the nation’s top diplomat.

On the passion scale, that’s bad news indeed. More than twice as many rate her poorly than excellent, and that sustains itself through most demographics, according to Politico. Predictably, Democrats think she’s wonderful and Republicans think she’s horrid, but the real problem for Hillary and the Democrats who want her as the nominee is how she scores among independents:

Yet, in a potential warning sign for Clinton, independents gave her lukewarm marks by a nearly 2-to-1 margin: 60 percent viewed her performance as “fair” or “poor,” compared with just 33 percent who answered “excellent” or “good.”

There may be some who question how a Secretary of State who started off her tenure with the misspelled “reset” button to Russia and ended it with Benghazi could get even that many non-Democrats to consider her performance good or excellent. It’s not a bad question, but it’s a testament to the enduring cachet of the Clinton brand. It might be interesting, or perhaps amusing, if a pollster doing a follow-up survey on Hillary Clinton in this format added an open-ended question for the “excellent/good” responders to name one significant accomplishment of Clinton’s during her four years as America’s top diplomat. If they can name one, they’d do better than some of Hillary’s public defenders.

The Politico poll covers the traditional questions as well. Barack Obama’s job approval/disapproval hits 43/57, and the passion imbalance is even more pronounced. Only 15% strongly approve of Obama’s performance, while 44% strongly disapprove — more than Obama’s overall approval, and almost three times more than those who strongly approve. Republicans now have a 39/32 lead on trust in foreign policy, and a two-point lead in the generic Congressional ballot, 44/42 with leaners and 39/37 without.

On ObamaCare, the popularity of the law pretty much continues in its usual vein. Only 17% like the law as it is, while 45% want it repealed entirely. Another 38% take the in-between position of keeping the law and fixing it, which will give Democrats only a very thin fig leaf going into the midterm elections. The law is deeply unpopular, and if the only thing they can say about it is “I’ll fix what we broke!”, it’s going to be a bleak fall.

Speaking of which, this poll provides yet another reminder that Democrats are mostly offering non-sequiturs for narratives in this electoral cycle. Once again, economic issues are by far and away at the top of voters’ minds. Economy and jobs are the top priority for voters, with 31% combined. Economic inequality is the top concern for … one percent, the lowest specified voter priority on the list. Four percent think the environment is the top priority. Immigration and health care get higher priority than government spending and the national debt, but all of these are in single digits. Contraception doesn’t even make it on the list. The more Democrats talk about income inequality and the “war on women,” the less credibility and relevance they will have in this election cycle.

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Gallup’sclickbait:Obama’sstillprettypopularamong…

Gallup’s clickbait: Obama’s still pretty popular among …

posted at 2:01 pm on July 11, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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If the White House still looks like it needs remedial training on social media, someone at Gallup apparently has a post-grad degree in clickbait. Based on a data dive on its daily tracking poll on presidential approval ratings, Gallup has produced trend lines on approval by religious identification — a handy way to look at Barack Obama’s relative strength among faith-based groups. The big news is the sharp decline across all religious demos over his presidency and even since the first of the year, but the headline is … well, let’s just say this caught some attention on Twitter:

U.S. Muslims Most Approving of Obama, Mormons Least

But …

Relative rank order of religious groups stable throughout his presidency

That’s because Muslims have been a strong Democratic demo since at least early in the Bush administration. Almost two-thirds of Muslim voters identify as Democrats, according to a Pew poll in 2007. Most polls put Republican identification at nearly nil among Muslims in America. It’s not terribly surprising, then, that they tend to be very favorable to Obama:

Seventy-two percent of U.S. Muslims approved of the job President Barack Obama was doing as president during the first six months of 2014, higher than any other U.S. religious group Gallup tracks. Mormons were least approving, at 18%. In general, majorities of those in non-Christian religions — including those who do not affiliate with any religion — approved of Obama, while less than a majority of those in the three major Christian religious groups did.

By the way, this has been true all along, so it’s not exactly news:

The relative rank order of the religious groups on job approval has been consistent throughout Obama’s presidency. In fact, the current rank order, with Muslims most approving and Mormons least, exactly matches the order seen over the more than five years he has been in office since January 2009.

The next paragraph, though, is actually significant:

Moreover, current job approval among each religious subgroup is between five and seven percentage points lower than the full 2009-2014 average for each. Obama’s current 43% overall job approval average is five points lower than his 48% average so far in his presidency.

Gallup includes two charts, one for approval in Christian religion demos over Obama’s presidency, and the other for non-Christians, including unaffiliated voters. The trendlines in both charts are downward, although sharper among Christian religions than non-Christian. There isn’t a single demo where Obama hasn’t dropped in 2014 by a margin larger than the five-plus year average’s MOE. That’s true even among Mormons, where Obama’s average approval levels in his presidency were already atrocious.

Besides, the Muslim demo is tiny and not dispositive in elections at all. That’s very much not the case for the Christian demos, with tens of millions of voters in each, and the decline has been significant over the last five-plus years. In 2009, Obama got 67% approval among Catholics and 58% among Protestants, and his presidential averages among each are 50% and 43%. The 2014 averages are 44% and 37%. Jewish voters, another traditional Democratic demo, are a smaller group but the situation is worse there. Obama started off with a 77% approval rating among Jewish voters, and has a presidential average of 62% — but that’s dropped to 55% in 2014, an arguably dangerous nadir among a traditional voting bloc that Democrats will need in the midterms. Even atheists have fallen off the pace, dropping six points in 2014 from the overall presidential average, 54% from 60%.

Gallup buries the lede here. There’s no surprise in the ranking of religious demos when it comes to Obama approval ratings, but what is a surprise is how much approval has fallen off this year, and how it has done so almost identically in all religious demos.

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HillaryClintondrops18pointsin18months

Hillary Clinton drops 18 points in 18 months in Bloomberg poll

posted at 8:01 am on June 13, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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Call this a capper to Hillary Clinton’s terrible, no-good, very bad week. A new Bloomberg poll shows that America is so excited about the prospect of a Hillary candidacy in 2016 that her approval figure has dropped 18 points in as many months, from a peak of 70% when she left the State Department to just 52% now. This cannot be what Team Hillary had in mind a week ago, as she prepared her national rollout of Hard Choices and instead demonstrated that she still has no answers for her record or her ambitions:

Hillary Clinton’s popularity continues to slide as she takes on a more political posture and Republicans raise questions about the deadly 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic post in Libya on her watch.

Fifty-two percent of Americans view the former secretary of state favorably, down from 56 percent in March and 70 percent in December 2012, according to the Bloomberg National Poll.

The decline means Clinton wouldn’t enter a possible 2016 race as a prohibitive favorite over key Republican rivals. While she still bests them in head-to-head matchups, she doesn’t have majority support against any of them.

This sounds a lot like 2006, when Hillary was a formidable candidate … as long as she didn’t actually run. In fact, that was her strategy in the 2008 cycle — to approach it as a coronation rather than a competition, and it ended up backfiring on her. One might have thought that the experience would have taught her something about campaigning; John Heileman said this week that she had vastly improved by the end of that primary fight, but too late to win. Either Hillary has forgotten those lessons, or her improvement in the spring of 2008 was an illusion.

Hillary’s not the only one getting bad news in this poll, either. Regardless of who gets the nomination, Democrats need Barack Obama to end his term on a high note for any hope of hanging onto the White House. Instead, Obama’s numbers have begun to slide like George Bush’s approval levels did at the same point in his second term. Obama gets a 43/53 on overall job approval, but that’s the highest approval level he gets:

• Economy: 38/57
• Health care: 38/58
• Budget deficit: 28/63

Those are the highest priority issues for voters in the Bloomberg poll, by the way. Combining “unemployment and jobs” with “declining real income” into the economy (as the approval question gets asked), 44% of respondents choose the economy as their top priority for the country at the moment. The two big messaging topics for the White House, immigration and climate change, get 6% and 5% respectively. The “war on women” and “income inequality” don’t even appear on this list.

The generic Congressional ballot is tied up at 39/39, with 4% leaning to both parties, and was asked of a subset of likely voters. That shouldn’t cheer up Democrats, however — the generic ballot questions in media polls usually underestimates Republican strength. With Obama’s numbers cratering, expect the turnout to be in the GOP’s favor.

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CNN:Obamadoesn’tgetto50%approval…

CNN: Obama doesn’t get to 50% approval … on anything

posted at 10:01 am on June 4, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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That analysis comes from CNN’s John King, who notes that Barack Obama has had some, er, problems connecting with the public in his second term. In the poll released yesterday, CNN asked respondents for opinions on twelve issues, and Obama didn’t get to 50% on a single one — but had majority disapproval for all but two:

In fact, his overall approval rating in the CNN series has barely budged from the announcement over a year ago that the IRS had targeted Obama’s political opponents in Tea Party organizations. It’s also about the same time that whistleblowers emerged to dispute the White House/State Department narrative on Benghazi, too. At that point, CNN had Obama’s job approval rating at 53/45, roughly where it had been since his re-election. It hasn’t been above 45% since.

Only on environmental policy did Obama register a positive reaction, but it’s mighty thin at 49/45. He scored 49/49 on terrorism, but most of the poll was conducted before Americans found out that Obama released five of the most dangerous Taliban figures from Guantanamo Bay — and did so illegally. Don’t expect that number to remain balanced for long, in other words. On issues closer to the midterm focus, Obama performs abysmally:

• Economy – 38/61, down from 43/56 in September
• Health care – 36/63, was 42/55
• Foreign affairs – 40/57, same
• Helping the middle class – 40/58, was not asked in September
• The VA – 37/58 (new)
• Ukraine – 38/53 (new)

The economy will be the real danger area for Democrats in the midterms, especially those running in red and purple states, and so will health care. Those are the top two issues respondents named for the most important issue in the country, 40% and 19% respectively — and they used to be Democratic Party strengths. The White House wants to talk about the environment and immigration, but neither of them even reach double digits on the priority list CNN gets from its survey.

This is the price of incompetence, and this was before the Bergdahl disaster. It’s left the White House and its Democrat allies no room to pivot anywhere. As King and his panel conclude, it’s not so much disagreement on the issues as it is a vote of no confidence in the man who’s implementing them.

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Tags: approval rating, Barack Obama, Bowe Bergdahl, CNN, economy, health care, ObamaCare, poll

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Obamaapproval40/59,GOPup41/34ongeneric

Obama approval 40/59, GOP up 41/34 on generic ballot in Politico battleground-states poll

posted at 8:41 am on May 19, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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Democrats looking to hold onto the Senate got bad news from an unusual source this morning. A new Politico poll shows Republicans holding a significant lead in generic Congressional balloting, 41/34, and 43/36 specific to the Senate races. Barack Obama’s approval numbers show him nearly 20 points underwater at 40/59, perhaps his worst ever showing in any major national poll:

President Barack Obama’s job approval slump and voters’ entrenched wariness of his health care law are dogging Democrats ahead of the 2014 midterm elections, and Republicans have captured a lead in the areas home to the year’s most competitive races, according to a new POLITICO poll.

In the congressional districts and states where the 2014 elections will actually be decided, likely voters said they would prefer to vote for a Republican over a Democrat by 7 points, 41 percent to 34 percent. A quarter of voters said they were unsure of their preference.

Among these critical voters, Obama’s job approval is a perilous 40 percent, and nearly half say they favor outright repeal of the Affordable Care Act. Sixty percent say they believe the debate over the law is not over, compared with 39 percent who echo the president’s position and say the ACA debate has effectively concluded.

Both Obama’s job approval and the partisan ballot matchup are markedly more negative for Democrats in this poll than other national surveys — a reflection of the political reality that the midterm campaign is being fought on turf that is more challenging for Democrats than the nation as a whole.

Sounds like wonderful news for Republicans — so what’s the catch? In this poll of likely voters in the midterms, the net partisan split is 34% Democrats … and 39% Republicans (26% independents, 1% decline to answer). That’s an unusual D/R/I, even if one is inclined to believe that Republicans are much more likely to turn out in big numbers than Democrats. This poll was conducted in “the states and districts with the most competitive Senate and House races, as ranked by the University of Virginia Center for Politics,” so these states may lean more Republican as a matter of course, too.

Now, if this accurately represents the turnout model for the midterms, then Democrats are stumbling toward a huge backlash the likes of which may make 2010 look like an autumn frolic. But the turnout model in 2010 was 35/35/29, albeit in a race that had a more even distribution of Senate races in red, blue, and purple states than the midterms this year will be. Still, that’s the closest model we have for this coming midterm, so these approval numbers and generic Congressional gaps may not be quite as pronounced as this one poll shows.

There are a couple of other anomalies from the national-poll picture. First, there is a net 48/52 opposition to same-sex marriage, where most polls over the last couple of years show low-majority support. Perhaps more significantly, nearly a majority of respondents (48%) support full ObamaCare repeal over modifying it (35%), which is a reversal of trends in other polls. In part, that may be because 12% of those with a positive experience with the federal government chalked it up to ObamaCare, but 28% of those who had negative experiences with the federal government cited health care as the reason — twice as high as taxes, and just after the tax season.

On the other hand, there are a couple of warning signals for Republicans and conservatives, too. Comprehensive immigration reform gets a massive 71/29 approval rating in these states, 79% support expanded background checks for gun purchases, and 74% support government action to deal with gender inequality in income. On the other hand, a push for marijuana legalization would meet with 56% opposition.

Even if one takes this with a small grain of salt based on the composition of the sample, it’s bad news almost all the way around for Democrats. They may be able to message on those issues in which they have substantial agreement, but all of those issues are single-digit concerns, even when allowing for multiple responses. The economy and jobs are by far the highest concerns of likely voters in these races, followed by health care. Immigration (3%) and pay equity (2%) barely show up on the radar screen at all. Democrats appear to be rolling into disaster, and the only real debate is its scope.

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Tags: approval rating, Barack Obama, battleground, generic ballot, Politico, polls

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Foxpoll:61%thinksObamaliesonimportant

Fox poll: 61% thinks Obama lies on important matters

posted at 9:51 am on April 17, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

The lesson here? If you like your personal approval ratings, you can keep your personal approval ratings. In the latest poll from Fox News, 61% believe that Barack Obama lies some or most of the time on “important matters,” while only 15% say Obama never lies:

About six in ten American voters think Barack Obama lies to the country on important matters some or most of the time, according to a Fox News poll released Wednesday.

Thirty-seven percent think Obama lies “most of the time,” while another 24 percent say he lies “some of the time.” Twenty percent of voters say “only now and then” and 15 percent “never.”

Only among his strongest constituencies does Obama’s reputation for honesty remain strong — or at least relatively so:

The number of voters saying Obama lies “most of the time” includes 13 percent of Democrats.  It also includes 12 percent of blacks, 16 percent of liberals, 31 percent of unmarried women and 34 percent of those under age 30 — all key Obama constituencies.

Yet some of those groups are also among those most likely to say Obama “never” lies to the country on important matters: blacks (37 percent), Democrats (31 percent), liberals (28 percent) and women (19 percent).

Yes, those are not exactly massive statements of confidence in Obama’s honesty. The problem for Obama is that even when he pursued unpopular policy, public perception of his intelligence and honesty helped keep his approval ratings from utterly tanking. His central conceit — that he was not just another politician — is what allowed him to endure the disastrous 2010 cycle and survive the 2012 re-election. The explosion of the “you can keep your plan” lie, combined with the more recent and more flagrant “women only earn 77 cents to men’s dollar” lie, has done the predictable damage to his reputation.

Even with that, though, Obama’s approval rating actually rebounded slightly in this series. It’s back to 42/51 from 38/54 six weeks ago in this series, which was an all-time low. Believe it or not, 42/51 is actually Obama’s best approval rating in this series for 2014 — a tie on approval, and the lowest disapproval of the year.

Not that anyone else is doing much better. Fox offered a few names and entities for favorability ratings, and the only one to have a net positive rating was … Hillary Clinton, at 49/45. Obama got a 45/51, a reflection of the honesty issue, and the only one to get a majority-unfavorable rating. Surprisingly, the GOP got a 45/45, with Democrats at 44/46. Chris Christie got within the MOE at 36/38, and Ted Cruz brought up the rear with 23/31.

Hillary shouldn’t get too excited about that finish, either. The Fox series doesn’t often ask that question about her, but it’s still the lowest since April 2008′s 47/46. She peaked in August 2012 at 63/31 just before Benghazi, and still got a 56/38 in June 2013 well after Benghazi and her departure from State. The 49/45 result this week is a fairly sharp drop, and it may mean that voters think of her differently as a retiree than they will as a candidate. That also was true in 2007/8, as it turned out.

Still, she blows all of the other Democrats out of the water in the 2016 question with 69% support; only Joe Biden gets double digits at 14%. Hillary also wins the head-to-head matchups, but those are much closer and less relevant this far out, especially with her favorability numbers already dropping.

Tags: approval rating, Barack Obama, favorability, Fox News, Hillary Clinton, lies, poll

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