Poll: Obama approval rating slipping in key areas

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Hardly anyone assumed the first several months of Obama’s Presidency would be easy, but lately things are looking downright difficult.

Surrounded by his embattled health care reform proposals, decidedly mixed economic data and a minor racial controversy the President has seen his approval numbers dip to the point where his administration might have to start taking notice. Although negative feelings aren’t being felt across the board to the same degree in which they plagued most of President Bush’s second term, “Obama Mania” has certainly subsided while the voices of opposition number greater and grow louder.

The cumulative average of ten recent polls taken since mid-July place President Obama’s approval rating at 55%. While this is still a positive number the media focus is all about momentum, and in terms of momentum 55% marks a sharp decline. It’s quite possible that the bottom has not been reached yet either. Gallup has Obama at a 52% approval rating with his negatives reaching 41% - both far and away the worst numbers of his young administration.

The news out of Rasmussen Reports is even worse President. Surveying “likely voters” instead of registered voters or general adults as most polls do, Rasmussen has the President’s approval at 48%. Furthermore, the number of those strongly disapproving of the job he is doing outnumber those who strongly approve by 12%, also the worse disparity yet for the Obama administration.

Lately bad news has proven easy to find and a difficult landmine to sidestep for the administration. Across the board polls show that at least a plurality of adults consider President Obama to have mishandled the racially tinged dispute involving the arrest of black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. by white officer James Crowley. Obama admitted to have chosen his wording poorly and planned to have both men attend the White House for a casual outdoor discussion. Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was bombarded with questions recently about the issue and the President’s falling approval ratings, dismissing the latter as unimportant.

Surprisingly perhaps modest gains made by the stock market in recent weeks and the imminent confirmation of hand picked Supreme Court Judge Sotomayor to the Supreme Court have apparently done little to boost Obama’s favorability. Some columnists such as Dan Balz of the Washington Post and Katie Connolly of Newsweek question the validity of numbers as relating to an actual decline in support for the President however. Balz took note of a focus group of mildly dissatisfied but still optimistic independents. Connolly in her piece pointed towards a PR struggle and the mere perception of negativity over actual negativity toward the President and his policies.

Perhaps what these polls show most clearly is that Obama hasn’t been specific enough in his plans, especially while his opponents have been so explicit in their criticisms. He’s losing because he’s combating particulars with generalities. When respondents are answering questions about “Obama’s plan,” it’s still not even clear what that plan is. The president certainly hasn’t detailed it. In this debate, specifics will always prevail over abstractions, but fortunately for Obama, that’s not such a hard problem to remedy. – Katie Connolly (Newsweek)

Still it’s hard to ignore the anatomy of what makes up Obama’s declining overall approval ratings. The proof may just be in the pudding after all - some examples below.

* 50% of likely voters expect the quality of health care to decline if reform is passed by the President and Congress - Rasmussen
* An equal number (46-46%) approve and disapprove of the way the President is handling health care policy – Time
* 41% of respondents disapproved of the way President Obama handled the Gates arrest compared to 29% who approved - Pew
* Just 39% approve of the way the President is handling the federal budget. That’s a ten-point drop in three months - AP-GFK
* By a margin of 49-47%, more adults disapprove of the way President Obama is handling the economy than approve – USA Today
* An even number of those (24% ea.) are very confident or not confident at all that Obama can “bring about real change to the way things are done in Washington” - Diageo/Hotline
* Since entering office only 32% of voters think things have gotten better under Obama. 30% say they have gotten worse, and 37% say they’ve stayed the same – Quinnipiac
* In the month of July consumer confidence has been at an average index level of (-50) – ABC News

Poll: Public lacks confidence in Congressional understanding of health care reform

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The American public is divided on the issue of health care reform. Regardless as to what side of the ideological fence they sit most are not confident that Congress has a grasp on the issue.

The most recent Gallup poll on the topic finds that many American citizens while admittedly do not have a strong understand of the complexities of health care reform, they are even less confident that their leaders do. 48% of adults suggest they have a good understanding of the issue against 51% who feel they do not. By a whopping disparity only 27% think Congress has a good handle on health care as opposed to 66% who think they disagree.

Such a low percentage corresponds with just 17% of American voters who claim to have high confidence in Congress. Interestingly a deeper look into Gallup’s numbers indicate that by a 35% plurality most voters in this latest survey feel that neither they nor their politicians have a good understand of the health care reform topic.

Less than a week ago another Gallup survey indicated no clear consensus on the on the desire for health care reform. Although 71% favored some sort of new legislation, far less than half (41%) considered it high enough a priority that it needs to be passed before the end of 2009, and 29% are either unsure or don’t not want it passed at all. Using some particularly strong wording the Kaiser Family Foundation randomly sampled over 1,200 adults earlier this month. Their findings showed that while a majority of Americans (56%) want the government to “take on health care reform right now”, a growing number of people (39%) do not think our country can afford to tackle the issue.

Whereas confidence in Congress on a variety of issues - health care included - is at historic lows, the confidence Americans have in President Obama handling the issue has also slipped. According to a two-week old ABC/Washington Post poll less than 50% approve of the President’s handling of issue. His approval to disapproval split of just five percentage points (49-44%) is down from a fourteen point margin in mid-June.

Pessimism about the effectiveness of health care legislation is also conveyed in two recent polls from the previously mentioned Kaiser Family Foundation and Rasmussen Reports.

A majority of Americans (53%) think that the passing of a new health care plan either would make things worse off or keep about the same. This includes topic ranges from the quality of care, cost, choice of doctors and hospital waiting times. Only when asked the question of whether the country as a whole would be better off with health care reform do a majority (51%) of Americans think new legislation would make things better according to the Kaiser Family study.

Rasmussen who has shown particular negative numbers for Obama and the Democrats as of late actually indicates that 49% of voters are against the new reform proposals brought forth by the President and Dems in congress. This against just 47% who favor the measure. Just 23% of voters believe new legislation will lead to lower costs against 53% who say medical treatment will become less affordable.

While it seems a bipartisan effort is now underway hammering out the details of new legislation for health care reform, convincing the masses that a new program will be a better program presents a different challenge all together.

ESPN SportsNation: polling for fun if not for facts

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The intrigue and influence associated with opinion polling is not lost on the folks at ESPN – the worldwide leader in sports.

ESPN has been virtually bombarding webpage visitors with splashy, albeit highly unscientific poll questions for years now. Using the “Sports Nation” moniker to classify the range of opinions from fans across the country the ESPN Empire has adapted a new show based on the results to their varying poll questions. The show is hosted by television personality Michelle Beadle and ESPN satellite radio host Colin Cowherd.

Looking to create a show that is primarily the product of the fans, those who tune in not only can vote on poll questions but also propose topics through phone calls, email or Twitter. Taking a look at the SportsNation homepage you’ll see topics ranging from Michael Vick’s suspension and Tim Tebow’s celibacy to fan blogs, videos, reporting and of course poll questions.

Many web publications have inserted poll questionnaires in the past, often referred to as straw polls. ESPN took things a step further however by associating a map layout of the United States to show not only how many of the votes were going to a particular response, but in which states topics and answers were getting the most play. Consider it ESPN’s virtual electoral map of sorts.

It’s fun, it’s flashy and it’s interactive. It’s also as previously stated, highly unscientific. First off according to ESPN.com’s very own press kit 94% of its registered users are male. While its probably unfair to assume that the percentage off all ESPN.com visitors are also male by at such a high clip, it’s equally far fetched to believe that female sports fans by the numbers are being equally represented by SportsNation.

ESPN online polls do not weigh their samples either meaning the series of important demographic and ideological factors obtained by responsible scientific polls are tossed out the window. Thirdly there are unbalanced sample sizes from state-to-state and a varying number of total responses from one poll to the next. More general questions from popular sports such as, “Which team do you think will win the Super Bowl?” will naturally generate more votes than a question on rule changes in professional lacrosse. At the state level more Pennsylvanians for instance are likely to chime in on a topic that includes an athlete or team, say Sydney Crosby or the Eagles, from its own backyard than ones that do not.

It could be said that this is no different of course than the number of those who vote in Presidential elections as opposed to the substantially lesser turnout for midterms.

One question on ESPN’s SportsNation home page asks fans what they think the current state of NASCAR is? Four possible responses (excellent, good, acceptable, troubled) follow an article written about the sport’s lackluster appeal of late. For those undecided or influenced voters the story could create a push-poll tendency that would take an otherwise “acceptable” response to “troubled”, or “excellent” response to merely “good”, and so forth.

The poll had 17,395 responses as of noon this Saturday. By a plurality 47% chose “troubled” as the best way to define the current state of NASCAR racing. 27% were inclined to vote it as being “acceptable”, 19% for “good” and just 7% for “excellent”. While 17,395 appear quite large for a sample, from one state to the next the totals vary considerably. 1,622 Californians voted for instance against just a total of fifteen from the least populated state of Wyoming.

Not surprisingly perceptions of NASCAR generally did best in the Deep South where the sport is most popular. 38% of the 192 voters in Alabama said the sport was in “good” shape – the only state issuing a plurality of positive responses. Northeastern and western states where NASCAR is not generally as popular received harsher treatment by and large with most states having a majority of voters considering it to be “troubled”.

Just as in any poll odd questions will also generate odd responses. Here’s one of nearly 17,000 votes asking SportsNation viewers if they think the Pittsburgh Pirates are “bad” for baseball. Terms like “bad” are incredibly ambiguous for starters and made even more roundabout by the two choices given to online voters. Question one says vote “yes” if you think they aren’t trying to win, whereas question two says vote “no” if you agree they have a plan to build. 54% of responders voted “yes”, but does this mean they really think the Pirates are bad for baseball or that they just agree with the answer selection that the team doesn’t seem to be trying their hardest to win games? Where are those voters who think the Pirates aren't bad for baseball but also aren't really trying to win accounted for?

Fortunately no one with more than a pedestrian understanding of opinion polling is going to place much stock in the straw polls of ESPN or the top-line results from SportsNation. In the meantime the ESPN polls are fun and noteworthy for the massive amount of responses they receive, the state-by-state breakdowns they show and the often-amusing questions they ask. So enjoy, just don’t look into it.

Poll: Rendell approval rating slips in Pennsylvania, but by how much?

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Six and a half years in as Pennsylvanian Governor, Ed Rendell is now facing perhaps the steepest uphill battle of his term.

A recent Quinnipiac poll suggested that problems with the state budget and Rendell’s heavily unpopular call to raise the income tax has shifted his approval rating from 54% to 39% in just two months. Painful economic times have cost even many of the most popular politicians from across the country, but Rendell’s dramatic fall over such a short period of time points as much toward the man himself as it does his affiliated job title in this crisis.

For starters here are some of the highlights from the Quinnipiac poll. We’ll delve our way into the flaws of this survey in just a minute.

By a nearly two-to-one ratio Pennsylvania voters reject the raising of income taxes even temporarily to help balance the budget. Just as alarming, 90% of Pennsylvanians consider the Governor and State Legislature’s inability to come up with a budget by the long since passed June 30th deadline a “serious problem”. As far as who deserves most of the blame, more voters point the finger at Republicans (17%) in the State Legislature than Democrats (11%), but Rendell receives 30% of the blame against an additional 28% who blame all sides equally.

Rendell’s proposal to raise the state income tax from 3.07% to 3.57% for three years gets support from only around half of Democrats and is wildly unpopular with independents and Republicans. Interestingly by a 62-24% margin most Pennsylvanians think that if there has to be a tax increase of any sort, let it be a hike in the state sales tax. Such a move could be beneficial to those living in the Philadelphia area where much “expensive” shopping is done across state lines in the tax free zone of Delaware already.

Now lets turn our attention from the problems facing Governor Rendell to some of the issues with this specific poll.

Firstly we ought to commend pollsters like Quinnipiac who put the sort of time and dedication into state level polling such as this. Take their sample size as indication. Many national polls do not gather responses from 1,173 voters let alone polls conducted at the state level. That said Quinnipiac’s flaw is not accounting for actual registration totals from the state of Pennsylvania into their sample distribution.

In this poll there were nearly as many Republican voters surveyed (511) as Democrats (512). The 150 filling out the “other” category made up 12.8% of this poll. That isn’t entirely inaccurate from Pennsylvania State Department totals showing registered independents at 11.8%. But the same State Department figures also indicate that currently Democrats outnumber Republicans in terms of registration in Pennsylvania by a margin of 51-37%, not the virtually identical 43.6% depicted here by Quinnipiac.

What we are seeing here then is a skewed depiction of Rendell’s performance with Pennsylvania voters towards the negative side. Take the Governor’s approval rating as an example and reapply the State Department numbers. From responses to the Quinnipiac poll we know that Democrats approve of Rendell’s job performance by a 58-34% margin. We also know that Republicans and independents disapprove by margins of 20-74% and 37-55% respectively.

State Department totals would tell us that the Governor’s overall approval rating should be closer to the neighborhood of a 42-48% split, not the 39-53% being reported by Quinnipiac. While this shows a considerable drop in support for the Governor, from a (+17%) rating in May to a (-6%) or (-7%) rating in July it is not quite the (-14%) plummet being depicted in this poll. As always, consider the source.

Poll: 40 years later most Americans approve of NASA, space program

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Recent polls taken as we celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing suggest that most Americans still are on board with the space program.

An interesting if unscientific Space.com poll showed 82% of that website’s nearly 7,000 responders in favor of sending astronauts back to the moon. Surely an overwhelming number of that site’s visitors would too be in favor of programs that push beyond the moon into the farther reaches of the solar system and galaxy. In tough economic times it might stand to reason that the majority of the American public would at best lukewarm at the prospects of billions of government dollars spent to reach the next frontier.

Has the space program lost its luster? A recent Pew Research Center poll would suggest the answer is ‘yes’ at least to an extent. When the asked the question of what is America’s greatest achievement of the 20th century ten years ago a healthy 18% of responders mentioned the Apollo 11 moon landing. When asked a similar question this past May about the greatest achievement of just the past fifty years only 12% now place landing on the moon at the top.

That said a recently Gallup survey shows plenty for NASA and the space program to be pleased about when it comes to their public image. 58% of responders to a poll question agreed that the benefits of the space program have justified the overall costs. This figure has shown a noticeable increase over the years since the Apollo 11 mission four decades ago. In 1980 for instance only 41% felt the costs were justified and in 1995 that number was still less than half (47%).

According to the Gallup survey the support for space program spending has bounced around a little over the years but the number consistently remains high. Currently 60% feel that spending on the space program should either be increased or at least kept at current levels. This figure is actually down considerably from a 75% clip in late-2003 but up from a low of 46% in late-1993 and some would suggest impressive considering current economic conditions. Furthermore those who think that NASA is doing a good or excellent job also continue to score with the American public. Their overall approval ratings have consistently been over 50% since the mid-90s and currently sit at 58%.


ABC News conducted a poll asking various space related questions a year and a half ago. Using rather roundabout terminology the poll found nearly two-thirds of responders think it probable or definite that “ordinary” people will travel in space in the “years ahead”.

That doesn’t mean that most Americans themselves are comfortable with the idea of space travel or living abroad in the galaxy however. Only 39% said they would travel in space if the option became available to them and only 38% think NASA should be looking to create permanent settlements located beyond Earth. The ABC poll also finds a considerable majority of the public believing in intelligent life in outer space. The margin of those believing to not believing (55-37%) holds virtually unchanged from a decade earlier.

Have conspiracy theorists gotten to enough of the American public to shift views on the first moon landing and the space program at large? Not really according to polls. In the late 90s polls taken by Gallup and CNN/TIME revealed that only about 6% of the American public believed at least the first moon landing to be a hoax. That’s far less than a 2000 poll that suggest 28% of Russians did not believe the moon landing to be true or the 25% of Britons in a survey conducted just two weeks ago who do not believe that event to have taken place.

CBS backs up previous less conspiracy riddled polls showing that Americans seem to take pride in the moon landings and are generally in favor of major space projects. There are identical results to two polls taken ten years apart asking whether those responding think the first moon landing was worth the costs or not. 71% who say it was worth it looking back now, 24% who disagree and another 5% who remain uncertain.

The numbers aren’t especially gaudy when asked whether the U.S. space program has achieved more, less or about what “you” expected since the first moon landing. The CBS poll reveals only 27% think NASA and company have exceeded expectations against 32% who say less has been accomplished than expected.

Lastly there seems to be conflicting data regarding public opinion on the topic of what is perhaps the next major space-age program. According to the aforementioned CBS poll by a 51-43% margin poll responders are in favor of sending astronauts to explore the planet Mars. CNN/USA Today however shows resistance to a Mars mission in a four year old poll taken of over 1,000 responders. The results of that survey show a 58-40% margin against the U.S. setting aside dollars to engineer a manned spacecraft that would fly to the Red planet. Interestingly even in the midst of “Moonwalk Mania” in the summer of 1969 only 39% of responders to this very same poll considered it worthwhile to invest in a Mars landing.

Polling 101: Why different polls show different results

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In 1936 one of the earliest examples of a nationally based opinion poll sought to predict whether Franklin Roosevelt would win a second term as President or if he would be defeated by Kansas Republican Alfred Landon.

The popular magazine Literary Digest released a poll just days before the election, results based on two million responses from questionnaires mailed to their readers. The result of their findings? Alf Landon the victor in a landslide, winner of 370-electoral votes. The actual result? Franklin Roosevelt wins reelection taking all but two states in the most one-sided Presidential Election in history.

It is generally agreed upon that the cause of the Literary Digest mistake and one that continues to haunt pollsters to this day was due to improper sampling. There were considerably more Republican readers of the magazine than Democrats and these questionnaire responders were understandably prepared to cast their votes for Landon over FDR. The disastrous error cost the Literary Digest dearly. Their credibility plummeted overnight and the publication never recovered.

Around the same time George Gallup an advertising executive organized a poll of 50,000 sampled responders and correctly predicted both that Roosevelt would win reelection easily, and that the Literary Digest results would be wrong. Since that time polling organizations like Gallup have played an essential part in elections and in charting public opinion on the issues.

Now in 2009 you would tend to expect that opinion polling would be a sophisticated enough process that most pollsters would show similar results. So how is it that certain polls can show such different results? Here are some examples of the polling process and its difficult task in rendering accuracy.

In the early-summer of 2008 it was widely accepted that Barack Obama was leading John McCain in the race for the White House by a margin of four to eight percentage points. Right around that time however two very reputable publications had the Illinois Senator leading his opponent by margins of 15% and 12%. Those pollsters were Newsweek and the Los Angeles Times and their findings caused quite a stir. Flash forward to late October when a Fox poll showed the Presidential race in a virtual dead heat, strikingly different than the 5-9% spread most other polls were indicating at the time.

How does this happen?

Well it generally takes an in depth look at the polls themselves to uncover where the top-line results generate their totals. Problem is that it is often difficult to find the actual poll report from the publication in question so people are at times at the mercy of the media’s assessment. Generally right leaning columnists will jump to report on a poll that looks particularly favorable to their candidates of choice, just as liberal reporters will thrill to see data that appears kind to their politicians. Even when dealing with something as easily depicted as numerical data, receiving “fair and balanced” reporting on polls can prove elusive.

The term “outlier” has been adopted by pollsters as a way to label polls that are significantly out of step from the average of others showing similar results. That does not mean however that such outlier polls are always flawed or incorrect however, just that they are generally viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism. For an example of what an outlier is lets pretend you took five tests on a subject you were familiar with. Let’s say “American History” was the topic and the results from these tests were made public. Here are the scores below;

Test 1: 92
Test 2: 85
Test 3: 88
Test 4: 90
Test 5: 65

The fifth and final test would be considered the outlier since the score was much lower than the average of the first four. The public would regard the fifth test as a fluke or outlier and assume your knowledge of the subject to be rather high. The teacher however with the answers to each question in hand notices a pattern. The fifth test revolved around a specific topic of American history you were less familiar with and the considerably lower score is testament to that.

Now take a look at the aforementioned poll examples from the 2008 election cycle. Two polls simultaneously released showing wildly positive numbers for Obama and later in the year the Fox poll that indicated a race that was practically tied. A deeper look revealed the answers. LA Times and Newsweek polled a disproportionate number of Democrats and the random sampling used by Fox had nearly as many Republican responders as Democrats. This in spite of data from partisan trends that indicated the number of Democrats outnumbered Republicans nationwide by 6-8% at the time.

Naturally there are other factors that make for “good” and “bad” polls. One such factor takes into account the subjectivity of poll questions, or as many who label them negatively, “push polls”. One of the more infamous examples of how push polls are used was in the 2000 Republican Primary. In an attempt to torpedo Senator John McCain’s campaign the George W. Bush campaign controversially mentioned a possible scandal under the veil of a simple poll question. “Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for John McCain for president if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?”

Sometimes surveys show push-poll tendencies unintentionally. Results gathered from questionnaires are often based heavily on who is asking and how the question is being phrased. Let us use another hypothetical example of how two polls containing similar questions can render wildly different results.

Question 1: In light of the recent Supreme Court overruling of Judge Sandra Sotomayor’s decision to suspend promotions of New Haven firefighters in the Ricci vs. DeStefano case do you approve, disapprove, or are you unsure of her confirmation to the Supreme Court?

Question 2: Judge Sandra Sotomayor has recently come under criticism for her controversial decision to deny New Haven firefighters promotions based on racial bias in testing. In light of the Supreme Court’s overruling of her decision in the Ricci vs. DeStefano case do you approve, disapprove, or are you unsure of her confirmation to the Supreme Court?

Notice the difference in terminology between the two questions. The second in particular makes a point of informing the responder that Judge Sotomayor “has recently come under criticism” and that her decision was deemed “controversial”. The first question makes no such claims and simply lays out the basic facts. If both questions polled Americans equally weighed along biological, political and ideological lines it would not be surprising to see Sotomayor score considerably worse with second question responders being led or “pushed” towards a negative opinion of the nominee.

Lastly for our discussion the simple accuracy of a poll is often dictated by the size of it. Over 130-million Americans cast their votes in the Presidential election last November. Opinion polls however are only able to survey a tiny fraction of those voters at any one time. So long as the polls are weighted properly to reflect the makeup of voters and as many variables as possible, generally the more people you interview the better results.

In North Carolina for example Public Policy Polling surveyed 2,100 “likely” voters, quite large for a normal state poll. This compared with just 600-interviewed by Zogby. While both polls were close to the actual result, the PPP poll showed then Senator Obama leading 50-49% with Zogby showing McCain ahead by a 49-48% margin. Both polls were released two days before the election and the end result showed that the large sample size used by Public Policy Polling may have paid off to the tune of a perfectly accurate prediction.

Just as in regards to political reporting at large, conspiracy theories stretch far a wide regarding polling. That said this writer believes most pollsters to be honest and legitimate in their search for accurate data of public opinion. Some pollsters are simply better and more consistent with the questions they ask, the sample sizes they use, and the data they reflect. Polls are an often arduous time consuming process that lacks perfection in almost every instance. The role that organizations like Gallup and their many offspring play in the shaping of personal opinions, public policy, and the candidates themselves however cannot be understated.

Poll: Obama approval tied to stimulus, economic outlook

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President Obama and Congressional Democrats' economic stimulus package is arguably the “New Deal” of the 21st century. Both ambitious and controversial the plan continues to generate passionate debate from wildly opposing view points on the social and political spectrum.

A new CBS poll indicates that while support for the stimulus may have slipped over time as our country continues to struggle out of its economic rut, the package is still viewed positively by a majority of Americans. The poll oddity here is the weight given to independents. 39.6% of the responders claimed to be independent, a figure that is much higher than national registration totals would suggest. However the gap between Democrats and Republicans surveyed by the poll is just over 6%, reflecting a fairly accurate depiction. Recent partisan samples from Rasmussen Reports find Democrats with an advantage of slightly under 7% for instance.

Taking our queue from this particular CBS poll support for the stimulus package seems tied to the view that voters hold of President Obama’s overall job performance. Both have slipped in recent weeks but continue to win over a majority of Americans. Solid economic news from the past couple of days could inspire more confidence in the effectiveness of both, although persistently strong data has proven fleeting thus far in 2009. Simply put, the source of falling support for Obama and the stimulus can be summed up by the saying, “it’s the economy, stupid!”

The CBS poll finds a 48-44% approval to disapproval split in terms of how President Obama is handling the economy. The four-point margin is down from a substantial 22-point divide from just last month. 57% of Americans now approve of Obama’s job performance. While that is down six points after a rocky month of June the decline in support comes from Democrats and independents, not Republicans. An additional 50% expect at least two more years of recession meanwhile. Democratic support for the President has dipped from 92% to 82% over the last month. It seems quite plausible however that a number of disenfranchised Dems may get back on the Obama-Express if and when Judge Sotomayor is confirmed to the Supreme Court.



Independents meanwhile have too shown a considerable drop in support from 58% in early-June to 50% in July. Republican support however is actually up seven-points to 30%. Although the vast majority of Republicans are critical of Obama’s economic policies, he scores considerably better with the GOP in terms of foreign policy and image. 38% of Republicans actually believe the image of the U.S. has improved under the Obama Presidency against just 25% who think it has gotten worse. Solid numbers from the opposition party especially considering how low George W. Bush scored with Democrats when asked the same question.

Cashing in with lukewarm independents, reviving the faith in Democrats and holding steady the support of GOP voters could go a long way in sowing up victories for Democratic proposals and the impending 2010 midterm elections.
One major negative in the continuing PR fight by the Obama Administration is the current pessimism held by Americans. Just 21% think the economy is getting better against 33% who say it is getting worse. That’s down from a positive 27-25% split in June. Still there is faith in the economic stimulus package as the President continues to preach to citizens of its long term impact on growth. In the long run 42% of those polled think the stimulus will render the economy better against 29% who think it will have no impact.

While various polls show that few agree with Oval Office getting to write a blank check, a majority (51%) want the government to have more control of the U.S. financial system. In terms of stimulus’ impact on the federal deficit six in ten would prefer to focus on debt reduction over government spending. By better than a two-to-one ratio however Americans are in favor of short-terms deficit increases to make room for the package.

President Obama has hitched his wagon to the economic stimulus and the numbers reflect that. The fate of his administration and Democrats in general may very well rest in its measurable success or failure over the next sixteen months.