Poll: Half still blame Bush for bad economy

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A new survey from Rasmussen Reports finds that half the country (50%) still blames the Bush administration for the current economic problems gripping the country. President Obama who has now been in office for over ten-months receives the blame of 42% of voters with an additional eight-percent undecided between the two.

Bush left office in January of 2009 with some of the worst approval ratings ever received by a President. Although initially greeted warmly by the vast majority of Americans Bush’s successor Obama has incurred slumping popularity, particularly on the economic front.

Last month Bush led Obama by a more modest 49-45% in this poll question. While being hit with slightly less blame than the last survey released early this month there is still an increase in the numbers of fingers pointed in Obama’s direction since October. That month Rasmussen found that just 37% of American voters blamed the current President for the country’s economic woes against 55% who considered it Bush’s mishandling. Women are more critical of Bush than Obama by thirteen-percentage points whereas men are almost evenly divided between the two. Younger adults age 18-29 are more critical of the Bush administration but unaffiliated voters now blame Obama’s policies slightly more than former President Bush’s.

Focusing on other minor positives for Obama, the President is also slightly buoyed by greater confidence in his economic judgment this month. By a 57-33% margin voters still trust their own economic judgment on the issues more than the President’s but that’s an improvement from the 62-27% split Obama received in late-October.

Greater economic confidence and improving stock market have not been enough to improve the President’s sagging approval ratings of late. Rasmussen gives one of the harshest public assessments of Obama’s job performance, currently at 46%, but the average from nine major polls released since mid-November hovers at just over 50%. Public support for health care, a major piece of the Obama agenda, continues to fall just as questions over the President’s handling of the situation in Afghanistan rise.

Obama will address the nation on his Afghanistan troop strategy on Tuesday perhaps shifting attention away from the economic state of America if only for a day or two.

PHOTO CREDIT: ASSOCIATED PRESS / Tony Gutierrez