Sunday, January 2, 2011
Sunday Question for Liberals
Barack Obama finished the year with a 47% approval rate, at least according to Gallup. Best guess (and I promise not to dig them up and hold it against anyone): where is he on that measure on December 31, 2011?
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47%. There are at this point about nine persuadable people left in the entire country, and even if they all go one way or the other, they're not enough to show up in a poll.
ReplyDeletehovering just over 50% , but an important side note will be the collapse of the GOP's approval ratings after a year of the Tea Party Congress. The GOPers already get remarkably low ratings, and I don't see those numbers going anywhere but down as they push controversial policies.
ReplyDelete52% +/-3
ReplyDeleteYeah, low 50s. Mostly based on the economy.
ReplyDeleteReally looking forward to watching how R's in the House get along (with each other) and with the Senate (where a bunch of centrist R's appear to be feeling liberated).
51, based on both the economy getting an eensy-weensy bit better (like, maybe 9% unemployment?) and a year of tea-party insanity.
ReplyDeleteRemember: Clinton picked up a few points in '98 while being impeached.
I would go with 49%. I don't think that people are going to leave their camps. The economy will still be slowly improving...
ReplyDelete51%. Modest gains in the economy and an unpopular Republican caucus will make him look a teensy bit better, but not really enough to change the dynamics of the country.
ReplyDeleteI agree with all of these justifications, but I think there's a pretty wide MoE. I agree with Ranger Dave...Probably about 52 but could well be more than that if 400k or so jobs per month are being added. Matt Jarvis: I would add that even though the economy might only be a "teensy bit better" and we probably will still have 9 percent unemployment, but it will be the direction of the unemployment rate...we could have 6 months of mediocre job growth followed by 6 months of accelerated job growth that would Obama's approval ratings in the mid 50s even with 9 percent absolute unemployment. As an unabashed supporter of Obama's reelection, I do hope this happens, but equally likely is continued but muted growth. There's still a lot of uncertainty.
ReplyDeleteI'll go with 51%. The economy will pick up, which will help. But it will still be one more year with a lot of economic problems that Barack Obama was the President. So we will see. I don't think it'll drop, though, and I think the margin of error is pretty small, except of course if there is some kind of gamechanging external event. Low is unchanged, high is 55%.
ReplyDeleteWhat a narrow range in the comments! My own top-of-the-head thought was 53%, for no apparent reason. With such a solid consensus, we must be wrong...
ReplyDeleteI'll go for the long - 55 percent.
ReplyDeleteTea Party craziness won't have significant impact, because everyone who cares either way is already locked in, but a rising economy will (re)build his support, including among currently disgruntled liberals.
And the economy will rise faster than the experts are predicting, for two reasons: a) the experts invariably predict continuation of the immediate past, and b) Americans don't DO austerity. Once we have some money in our pockets we will buy stuff we've been putting off. It is all cyclical.
I'm another vote for low 50s (let's say 52%). An improving economy (cross fingers) and the predictable insanity of the Congressional GOP will make Obama look good in contrast.
ReplyDeleteI'll stick my neck way out and say 52%.
ReplyDeleteI'll say 49%. The economy improves at a slow pace. Congress doesn't do much on the big legislation front, certainly no drawn out things like the ACA. And what they do manage to do will involve Republicans actually doing something instead of sitting back and saying no to everything. So the actual governing part I say cancels out in the end. So those two points come mostly from the economy not doing worse.
ReplyDeleteLow 50's, 49 conservative estimate.
ReplyDelete2011 will likely be a better year for Obama than 2010, though likely not as good as 2009.