Today's Gallup tracking poll puts Barack Obama at 45% approval, down a couple of ticks from yesterday. That's in line with his recent results, but the more interesting thing to me is that as of yesterday, the entire range for Obama's approval ratings from Gallup for a full year have been narrow: no lower than 44%, and no higher than 56%. Now, there has been change over the year, but everything that's happened since the beginning of August last year has basically pushed Obama from a bit above 50% to a bit below 50%.
He's been slipping a bit on the Pollster.com average of polls lately, and now stands at exactly 45% there too so perhaps he's about to fall out of the zone he's been in for so long...but maybe not. Whatever happens in the future, it's worth (at least in my view) the reminder that Obama's real slide in the polls happened in spring and early summer 2009, and that since then he's been fairly stable, with just a bit of a downward drift.
Monday, August 9, 2010
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A big initial wave of euphoria wore off soon after the inauguration (even before), and then there was a wave of disenchantment - moderately conservative indies, I'd guess - as the economy stayed bad and reality set in. Since then the economy has stayed bad, but Obama has only lost ground quite gradually, about a point per month.
ReplyDeleteI also sense that the conventional wisdom has not settled on a failure narrative, at least not yet. Obama has not been Carterized.
For Republicans the worry should be that this might be another 1982.