Thread: Relentless Incompetence: Americans Are Giving Up on Obama

Polls: Obama Approval Drops to Fresh Low, Major Midterm Impact

Guy Benson | Jun 18, 2014
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President Obama's polling slump continues apace:

Phil Kerpen ✔ @kerpen Follow
Obama hits fresh lows in today's Reuters/Ipsos. Approve/Disapprove: 35.7/59.2 (15.8/42.1 Strongly) http://polling.reuters.com/#!response/CP3/type/day/dates/20130101-20140617 …

2:21 PM - 17 Jun 2014
Reuters Polling - View results for "Obama approval" from 2013-01-01...

View results for "Obama approval" from 2013-01-01 to 2014-06-17

Reuters Top News @Reuters


In the fresh NBC/WSJ poll (see updates below on Hillary), Obama's approval slides to (41/53) -- which is tied for his lowest approval level ever in that series. He's at (41/54) on the economy, and a dreadful (37/57) on foreign affairs. A 54-percent majority say Obama is "no longer able to lead the country." For the umpteenth time, the president may have already attained effective lame duck status, but that doesn't make his polling irrelevant. Far from it. I've routinely pointed to political data analyst Sean Trende's formula that suggests a strong historical correlation between flagging presidential approval ratings and substantial Congressional gains for the opposition party:

[It] isn’t a perfect relationship, but presidential job approval is still the most important variable for how his party fares in midterm elections, explaining about half of the variance. The relationship is highly statistically significant: For every point in job approval the president loses, his party loses 0.6 percent of its caucus. (The chart doesn’t measure drop in job approval; just job approval.) So, at 60 percent, the president should lose 5 percent of his caucus; at 50 percent, it is around 12 percent of his caucus lost; at 40 percent, it’s about 18 percent of his caucus lost -- which would be 36 seats. Now the latter is highly unlikely to happen...As I’ve said before, this election isn’t going to be about sixth-year itches or any such electoral mumbo-jumbo. It’s going to be about presidential job approval, supplemented by the state of the economy (which also affects job approval to a degree) and how overexposed or underexposed the president’s party is. Right now, the second factor provides a drag beyond the president’s job approval, while the third factor will work heavily to Democrats’ advantage on Election Day...It is still far too early to speculate about how many seats Democrats will lose (or perhaps gain) in the 2014 elections. But if Obama’s job approval is 40 percent on Election Day, gains would be unlikely, and Democratic losses in the low double digits...would be plausible.

Republicans need to net six seats to reclaim the US Senate in November. The Pew Research Center is out with a new analysis that posits that a "dug in" electorate doesn't augur well for Democrats in 2014:

Since the Affordable Care Act was passed nearly four years ago, a plurality of Americans have disapproved of it. Since the onset of the Great Recession six years ago, more than 80% of Americans have rated economic conditions as only fair or poor. And since winning a second term, Barack Obama’s approval score has mostly been in the mid-40s or lower. One or more of these attitudes will have to move in a clearly positive direction for the Democratic Party to avoid a drubbing in the congressional elections, according to a new analysis of voter opinion. So far the indications for that are not so good. Recent months have shown signs of economic progress and indications that the Affordable Care Act has begun to achieve its goals. But there is little indication that the unemployment rate’s falling to 6.3%, the Dow Jones average soaring to a new high and the ACA signing up 8 million people, (including many young people,) had any effect on attitudes about these two key issues.

Perhaps the signs of "progress" cited haven't impacted attitudes because people either intuitively or explicitly understand what's really going on. For instance, the unemployment rate has dropped steadily because the US workforce participation rate continues to hover around a three-decade-plus low. People are leaving the workforce, and the official U-3 jobs number is "benefiting" from that effect. Most Americans simply don't believe the economy is improving. And on Obamacare, people know that its core promises have been broken, and that the White House's much-touted "milestones" aren't all they're cracked up to be. Not even close: A large majority of "new" exchange enrollees previously had insurance, a sizable chunk of them aren't actually enrolled, and millions of applications have been marred with complex data discrepancies. And, contra an assertion in the paragraph above, not that "many" young people have signed up for Obamacare, when compared to the administration's targets. Pew's write-up continues: "A special analysis of a recent Pew Research Center/USA Today survey suggests that these three factors are strong correlates of congressional preferences in 2014. Taken together, opinions about the national economy, the Affordable Care Act, and the president’s job performance accurately predict congressional voting intentions." Take a look at this chart, which isn't likely to reassure nervous Democrats:





But before conservatives get cocky, behold this headline: "Clinton Does Better Than Obama on Every Issue, Poll Says." On that note, I'll leave you with Allahpundit doing his Eeyore thing:

Allahpundit @allahpundit Follow Insurmountable gender gap #HillaryInThreeWords
5:43 PM - 17 Jun 2014


UPDATE - She may be a front-runner, but she's not politically bulletproof. Lots of room for the 2014 numbers to recede closer to 2008 levels, too:

Mark Murray ✔ @mmurraypolitics Follow New NBC/WSJ poll: Public divided on Hillary for 2016: 38% would definitely/probably vote for her; 37% say no chance
6:30 PM - 17 Jun 2014






http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybens...campaign=nl_pm

http://www.alipac.us/f19/breaking-ne...2/#post1418675

In No Mood for Trophies

By Charlie Cook

With the midterm elections less than six months away, it's a good time to take stock of things and even venture a few assumptions. But first, we need to acknowledge that when we talk about public attitudes, we are talking about human behavior and unexpected national events, which can cause close races to tip one way or the other, or to make less competitive contests even more so.

Having said that, it appears that the political environment, national economy, and issue agenda are unlikely to change significantly before November. At this point, this election is what it is, and it will be fought on terrain pretty much like what we see today.


(Kacper Pempel/Reuters)Because midterm elections are more a referendum on the White House occupant than anything else, President Obama's 44 percent approval/51 percent disapproval ratings in the Gallup Poll for both April and May are deeply troubling for Democrats. Obama's Gallup approval numbers have risen 3 points since last fall, when they hit 41 percent with the disastrous launch of HealthCare.gov. That improvement now seems to have leveled off, however, and his ratings are still in a bad place. They are comparable to his numbers just before the 2010 election, when Democrats lost 63 House and six Senate seats.
You could say that if Obama were a stock, he would have a very narrow trading range: His approval numbers are rarely better than 45 or 46 percent; equally rarely are these numbers worse than 41 or 40 percent. His disapproval numbers, meanwhile, are in the 50s. With Gallup's pollsters conducting more than 15,000 interviews each month, and with the firm using consistent methodology, it's a good poll to watch for trend data.
Six of the critical Democratic-held Senate seats up this year are in states that Mitt Romney carried by 14 points or more in 2012. It's safe to assume that Obama's job-approval ratings in these places are substantially lower than his national numbers.
If a midterm election is a referendum on anything other than the president, it is on the economy or, more accurately, the public's perception of the economy. The economy is expected to bounce back this quarter from its painful, weather-induced hiccup in the first quarter, when gross domestic product contracted by 1 percent.
The just-released Blue Chip Economic Indicators survey of 54 top economists forecasts that the economy will grow at a 3.7 percent rate for the second quarter, then settle in at 3.1 percent in the third and fourth quarters. Unemployment, which was 6.7 percent in the first quarter, is expected to gradually decline to 6.4 percent in the second, 6.3 percent in the third, and 6.1 percent in the fourth.

You could say that if Obama were a stock, he would have a very narrow trading range.

Although the unemployment arrow is technically moving in the right direction, any jobless rate of 6 percent or higher isn't good. Indeed, recent polling showed that a strong majority of Americans believe we remain in a recession, even though the recession that began in December 2007 was declared officially over in June 2009. While various consumer-confidence ratings are showing numbers that are among the best since the onset of the recession in 2007, the readings are still at very low levels, and Americans are still highly anxious about the current state and future of the economy. This "three-steps-forward, two-steps-back" recovery means that few voters are in the mood to hand Obama or the Democrats trophies or ribbons for it.
In terms of the issue agenda, attitudes toward the Affordable Care Act have not significantly changed and are unlikely to between now and November. Obamacare overshadows any other specific issue; no improvement on the public's attitudes toward it is another tough blow to the party.
Still another problem that seems to be growing for Democrats is the general perception—whether someone agrees or disagrees with this administration on policy—that Obama officials lack competence. That on simple matters of execution—be it handling the economy, the launch of HealthCare.gov, the general administration of the ACA, or problems with the Veterans Administration—they seem like the gang that can't shoot straight. The steady erosion of confidence in the Obama administration further limits Democrats' ability to bounce back from negative events.
There was a point when voters hit the mute button and stopped listening to George H.W. Bush and then to his son George W. Bush. We now seem to have reached that point with Obama. Voters have thrown up their hands and lost hope that things will get any better.

This article appears in the June 21, 2014 edition of National Journal Magazine as In No Mood for Trophies.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/the-c...phies-20140618

bttt

http://www.alipac.us/f9/thanks-obama...merica-312967/