Obama approval hits new low

Post Reply New Topic

http://articles.cnn.com/2010-09-24/politics/obama.approval.poll_1_opinion-research-corporation-poll-approval-rating-democratic-candidates?_s=PM:POLITICS

With little more than a month to go before the midterm elections, President Barack Obama's approval rating has hit an all-time low.

Only 42 percent of Americans now approve of how Obama's handling his job as president, according to a new CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll. Fifty-four percent disapprove of his performance.

The figures represent a new low-water mark in the CNN/ORC poll for the president, who, almost two years into his term, continues to wrestle with public worries over a sluggish economy and exhaustion with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Congressional Democrats aren't faring much better. They now face a nine-point deficit when likely voters are asked which party they'll back in November, according to the poll.

Top non-partisan political analysts have given the Republicans a serious shot at picking up the 39 seats necessary to recapture the House of Representatives.

A solid majority of all Americans -- 56 percent -- say that Obama has fallen short of their expectations. As a result, the president is not in a position to help struggling Democratic candidates; only 37 percent of likely voters say they are more likely to vote for a congressional candidate backed by Obama.

In contrast, half of all likely voters now say they are likely to choose a candidate supported by the conservative Tea Party -- contributing to the GOP's 53 to 44 percent lead when such voters are asked which party's candidate they will choose in November.

Also damaging the Democrats: the enthusiasm gap. Republicans in general are much more engaged and excited about voting than Democrats, according to the new poll.

One cautionary note for Republican candidates: voters aren't wild about the GOP, either. Nearly half of likely voters who say they will vote Republican in the fall say they are doing so to oppose the Democrats, not to support the Republicans.

Also potentially cutting against GOP momentum: while nearly eight in 10 voters favor extending the Bush tax cuts for families making less than $250,000 a year, a majority oppose extending the cuts for families that make more than that amount.

Republicans have vehemently argued in favor of extending the cuts for the wealthiest Americans as well, arguing that a failure to do so would damage the recovery. Top Democrats, led by Obama, claim that the roughly $700 billion price tag associated with an extension of the cuts for the richest Americans would be fiscally irresponsible.

While the president's approval ratings may seem grim, he has plenty of company among his most recent predecessors. Obama's approval rating exactly matches that of Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter in September of their second years in office.

The CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll was conducted September 21-23, with 1,010 adult Americans questioned by telephone. The survey's overall sampling error is plus or minus three percentage points.

There is a 4.5 percent margin of error for the 506 likely voters questioned in the poll.

Can I get a "WOO HOO ! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !"

Needs to be lower.

From CNN....damned liberal media!! !

My bet is the Prince Obama is a one termer.

ruveyn

Same thing happened to Clinton.

If the repugs gain controll of congress that might actually be good for Obama in the long run. Hopefully the hardline wing-nuts get as many seats as possible. Then the repugs will push to repeal healthcare reform, bring back recissions and "pre-existing conditions", cut unemployment benefits, and at the same time attempt to add more tax cuts for the wealthy in order to ensure that the deficit will never shrink. Only then will the idiot masses wake up to the fact that the Democrats as the lesser of two evils and turn out against the republicans and teabaggers in 2012.

We had a Republican presidency from 2001 to 2009 and a Republican Congress from 2001 to 2007, and many Americans, particularly the Tea Partiers, are ready to vote them right back in. Tea Partiers see their new crop of Republicans as "real conservatives" unlike the neoconservatives of the Bush years. For progressive-minded individuals, these candidates should make us wary. They maintain the neoconservatives' "tough on the war on terror" stances and are even more socially conservative than a neocon.

Just because his approval rating is low doesn't mean that he's a bad president. All that means is that Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, WorldNetDaily, et al. have been effective in their fear-mongering campaigns against him.

Actually, they way things stand the tea party candidates might win a lot of seats. But that's only because many of the swing Obama voters (the people who voted for Obama but did not vote for Kerry or Gore) will choose not to vote in "protest". Yet once the tea party candidates actually get elected and start running their mouths off they will be seen for what they are and the people who didn't vote in 2010 as a "protest" will be scared into voting democratic in 2012.

This is my prediction anyways.

I say "bring it on". Having a republican majority full of wing-nuts will give Obama a chance to toughen up and gain some respect. There'll be no more wheeling-and-dealing, just an all out war. It'll be gridlock but at least it will give the people 2 more years to contemplate whether they really want the republicans back in power.

I just hope for the complete elimination of the party system, but that's just my foolish thinking.

Progressives should be very unhappy with Obama, as he has not met expectations. With this much resistance from the conservatives, he might as well have just done whatever he wanted. But he still plays closer to the center, which means he's little better than Clinton. Not a great hope and change compared to same old business.

If the people see things increasingly bad every two years, the entire system should be scrapped rather than bouncing back and forth between the two sides continuing to pull down everything.

I have to agree that I'm a bit sick of looking at the stuggle of big government vs. big government (leftist vs. neoliberal), sadly that's how the 2008 voting selection looked.

I think so long as the plan is to ram as many things as they can past the American people that it could very well be that the Republicans could get back in too smug and comfortable. I don't want to see that. Hopefully the tea party assertion that the public needs to hold the feet of the politicians they like to the fire even more than those they don't like will be acted on (I have a feeling Beck likely will - hopefully he won't be the only one), we don't need the ball being passed back and forth between ineptitudes.

this fella said it best-

"no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the american public" - h. l. mencken

<-------Obama's administration.

Thank you for, once again, showing how immature you really are, and how unable you are to be open-minded at all. You're a horrible example of a Republican, and it's people like you who are driving the Republican party further and further into the ground (and hopefully, soon, into obscurity) every single day.

It's not healthy to take debates on internet forums seriously and you shouldn't either.

So your comments about the Obama administration were meant to be taken in jest? Or will you admit that you're being just as serious as I am?