Fox News reports:
President Obama’s job approval rating has fallen to 47 percent in the latest Gallup poll, the lowest ever recorded for any president at this point in his term.
Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford and even Richard Nixon all had higher approval ratings 10-and-a-half months into their presidencies. Obama’s immediate predecessor, President George W. Bush, had an approval rating of 86 percent, or 39 points higher than Obama at this stage. Bush’s support came shortly after he launched the war in Afghanistan in response to the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said he doesn’t “put a lot of stock” in the survey by Gallup, which has conducted presidential approval polls since 1938, longer than any other organization.
“If I was a heart patient and Gallup was my EKG, I’d visit my doctor,” Gibbs said in response to questions from Fox. “I’m sure a six-year-old with a Crayon could do something not unlike that. I don’t put a lot of stake in, never have, in the EKG that is daily Gallup trend. I don’t pay a lot of attention to the meaninglessness of it.”
Gallup Editor-in-Chief Frank Newport responded: “Gibbs said that if Gallup were his EKG, he would visit his doctor. Well, I think the doctor might ask him what’s going on in his life that would cause his EKG to be fluctuating so much. There is, in fact, a lot going on at the moment — the health care bill, the jobs summit, the Copenhagen climate conference and Afghanistan.”
The new low comes as Obama struggles to overhaul the nation’s health care system and escalates America’s involvement in the Afghanistan war. He is also presiding over a deep and prolonged recession, with unemployment at 10 percent.
“There’s no doubt Obama’s 47 percent is mainly a result of the continuing bad economy,” said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. “But there is also a growing concern about government spending and debt, and a sense that Obama is trying to do too much, too soon.”
He added: “President Obama has reason to be concerned about his ratings. Even in tough times, presidents have usually been able to stay above the critical 50 percent mark in the first year, when the public is most inclined to give the new incumbent the benefit of the doubt.”
Obama officials have not always shown disdain for Gallup. During last year’s presidential campaign, Obama adviser David Plouffe, trumpeted “the latest Gallup poll” to reporters because it showed that 53 percent of Americans did not find Obama Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, “trustworthy.”
When Gallup began taking presidential approval polls 71 years ago, Franklin Roosevelt had been president for more than five years. During his remaining time in office, his job approval rating never fell below 48 percent.
The next 11 presidents, both Democrats and Republicans, all had higher job approval ratings than Obama at this stage of their tenure. Their ratings were:
— George W. Bush, 86 percent
— Bill Clinton, 52 percent
— George H.W. Bush, 71 percent
— Ronald Reagan, 49 percent
— Jimmy Carter, 57 percent
— Gerald Ford, 52 percent
— Richard Nixon, 59 percent
— Lyndon Johnson, 74 percent
— John Kennedy, 77 percent
— Dwight Eisenhower, 69 percent
— Harry Truman, 49 percent
The poll is an average of a three-day tracking of 1,529 adults taken Dec. 4-6. It has a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
(Source: Fox News)
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17 Responses
The Harris Poll has him at 43%!
Such poll numbers are no surprise for the first manufactured president in American history. The Styrofoam pillars used at one of his campaign speeches should have been a tip off to voters and an harbinger of his administration. I support bringing back literacy tests at the polls. His idiot supporters brought this on themselves, and on the rest of us.
Joke is still on us for at least 3 more years. Also I’m sure CNN will come out with a poll which shows him at the highest approval rating yet of any president.
This is no chiddush.This survey comes from fox news,which the black house wants to shut down in marxist fashion.I cant wait for barrys next immature outburst against this legitimate news source as he whisks his way on Air Force One to the global warming summit in Copenhagen.
The congressional election is still 11 months away. The firs presidential primary is three years away.
There doesn’t seem to be much of a correlation between getting relected and popularity this far in advance (note that the least popular presidents on the list were reelected, and in the case of Reagan, by a landslide).
Assuming no major triumphs in foreign affairs (Bin Laden is defeated and the Muslim world decides they love us)or disasters (an Afghan Dienbienphu), the election will probably be decided on economics, with side issues such as health care and global “warming” important only as the affect the economy. Other the blind-sided true believers (right or left), no one can predict the economy in October 2012, any more than anyone in 2005 could have predicted the economy in October 2008 (indeed, McCain didn’t realize the election was about economics until it was too late).
It’s unclear to me what the YWN hopes to accomplish with a story like this.
Is anyone surprised?
Uh Mr. President, do you get the hint?
This is totally ludicrous! Barak Obama is absolutely insane! How could he possibly get even 47%?? He is not just anti-Israel, but anti- American! Yemach Shemo
#8 – the hint is that the president had better produce good results before the election (whether that is possible, especially given many of his questionable policies, is a different matter).
akuperma, and who may I ask came up with those policies? Rahm Emanuel after eating his Cheerios in the morning?
Obama remains the most popular national politician. Here are the results from the most recent Research 2000 poll (the only one that tracks popularity of Congressional leaders):
Obama 52 f 41 u
Pelosi 41 f 50 u
Reid 30 f 59 u
McConnell 16 f 67 u
Boehner 14 f 65 u
Congressional Democrats as a whole 40 f 55 u
Congressional Republicans as a whole 14 f 69 u
Democratic party as a whole 43 f 53 u
Republican party as a whole 25 f 65 u
President Obama has become unpopular but the Republicans may be headed to extinction.
Surprise! Surprise! I don’t even know how he got UP to 47%. Oh yeah, I forgot “this is the largest muslim nation in the world”
Let’s just pray he doesn’t get in for a second term. Better yet – let’s pray Moshiach comes before that.
It seems that americans start to realize that they sent a baby to the white house
Very good article.
The wheels are coming off the Obama chariot.
He’s a one-termer vaday.
The only thing that really got him elected was not, by the way, his spin. It was the absolute incompetence of the Bush administration and the unforgiveably bad bungling of McCain. They handed it to him on a silver platter.
If the Reps are smart they’ll run somebody with grey matter next time…
stzc, it is great seeing you back blogging on Yeshiva World.
Objectively, those other presidents were merely taking over the reigns while America was in status quo mode. AB (After Bush), when America landed into unprecedented crisis, all America is anything but living the status quo. We are all sitting ringside formulating opinions or more emergency situations than the OTHER presidents had COMBINED.