1 1 <p>Presidential approval ratings ebb and flow. At any given point a low--or high--rate of approval may reflect little about a president's overall approval over time. At this point in their tenure both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton were hovering in the low to mid-40s (both ended their presidencies with relatively high approval numbers). Still, this week's numbers suggest that our current president has moved well past his honeymoon with voters: for the first time, his positive and negative numbers in the <em>PollTrack</em> average are equal. And his positive approval rating has dropped well below 50%. As of Sunday evening, <em><strong>47.3%</strong></em> of voters <em><strong>approve </strong></em>of the way President Obama is handling his job; 47.3%, disapprove.</p> 2009-11-22T10:15:01-05:00 1230 false true 2009-11-23T10:04:11-05:00 2009-11-23T10:04:11-05:00 1 1 <p><a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/118928/Obama-Approval-Compares-Favorably-Prior-Presidents.aspx?CSTS=alert">Gallup publishes this chart, which compares the approval ratings of president's over the past sixty-years in May of their first year in office</a>. As you can see, only three other president's have done better than Obama, though all but two came in over the 60% mark. Kennedy and Eisenhower's approvals were in the stratosphere, at 77% and 74% respectively. Reagan is third at 68%; Obama not far behind at 65%. The numbers for Lyndon Johnson are not reported (perhaps because he was not elected to his first term, having assumed office upon the dead of John Kennedy in November 1963):</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><span class="mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image" style="display: inline;"><img class="mt-image-center" style="margin: 0pt auto 20px; text-align: center; display: block;" src="http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/polltracker/prezchart.gif" alt="prezchart.gif" width="485" height="279" /></span></p> 2009-05-29T17:25:52-04:00 935 false true 2009-06-01T10:30:28-04:00 2009-06-01T10:30:28-04:00 1 1 <p>In what may be a plus (but also potentially a hindrance), Barack Obama begins his presidency with an exceptionally high approval rating--now hovering around 70%. Even more remarkable, <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/113572/Obama-Hillary-Clinton-Share-Most-Admired-Billing.aspx">according to a recent national poll</a> of adults, 32% of Americans choose Barack Obama as the "man they most admire living anywhere in the world today, putting him in the No. 1 position on Gallup's annual Most Admired Man list." To put Obama's standing in perspective: Obama is the first president-elect since Dwight Eisenhower in 1952 to top the list. And he has done it with a runaway high figure. For comparison, as president-elect in December 2000, George W. Bush was mentioned by just 5% of Americans, ranking him fourth. In December 1992, president-elect Bill Clinton ranked second behind outgoing president George H.W. Bush, with 15%. And in 1988, then president-elect Bush achieved third place, with 9%." Almost as important for the incoming administration:&nbsp; Hillary Clinton earns the top spot for Most Admired Woman, named by 20%." Clinton's numbers are significant given the highly public and important role she will play in the White House. Obama's numbers suggests that the president-elect is coming into office with a good deal of political capital--an electorate that both admires and respects him. Indeed, <a href="http://us.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/12/31/obama.leadership.poll/index.html">a recent CNN/Opinion Research survey</a> reported that 76% of Americans believe Obama is a strong and decisive leader. (By contrast, just 60% of voters felt the same way about George W. Bush when he took office in 2001.) "That's the best number an incoming president has gotten on that dimension since Ronald Reagan took office in 1981," CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said. "The public's rating of his leadership skills is already as high as George W. Bush's was after 9/11 and easily beats the numbers that both Bush and Bill Clinton got at the start of their first terms in office." And what do Americans expect Obama to actually achieve. According to a <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/images/PollingUnit/1082a6ObamaPriorities.pdf"><em>Washington Post/ABC News</em></a> survey, it's quite a bit: 70% of Americans expect Obama to improve the U.S. image abroad; 68% expect him to bring about health care reform; 67% say he will implement policies to deal with global warming; 64% believe he will end U.S. involvement in Iraq; and 46% percent believe he will improve the economy." The the issue of the economy is significant in this poll, out because it is the only one of these goals in which a majority (52%) don't believe Obama will succeed. In the end, high hopes sometimes lead to dashed expectations if the public perceives a new president's initiatives as failed, problematic, or counterproductive. <em>PollTrack </em>will closely watch these numbers over the next few months to see if this extraidinary public goodwill continues and flourishes.</p> 2009-01-01T13:22:12-05:00 653 false true 2009-01-09T01:52:29-05:00 2009-01-09T01:52:29-05:00 1 1 <p>While Obama's pick of Biden did not appear to lift his numbers--perhaps because it further alienated Hillary Clinton's most ardent supports--the Rasmussen Daily Tracking Poll discerns a "modest" bounce for Obama as his convention unfolds: "Obama&rsquo;s poll numbers have improved over the past couple of nights and today&rsquo;s update shows a tie race because it includes a mix of both recent trends. But it seems likely that Obama will end the convention with a modest lead over McCain."</p> <p>Is this bounce durable, however: will the Democrats maintain the lead given the imminent announcement of McCain's running mate (as early as this evening) and the start of the Republican National Convention, now four days away?</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> 2008-08-28T09:44:53-04:00 29 true 2008-08-28T09:45:10-04:00 2008-10-02T01:15:33-04:00 1 1 <p>While Pew and most other recent surveys call the race a statistical tie--based on the closeness of the numbers and the polls' margin of error--the consistency of these results suggest that Barack Obama <em>does </em>maintain a modest national lead, despite losing ground since June.&nbsp; All but a few national polls (the exception: <a href="http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1535">Zogby </a>and several Rasmussen Daily Tracking results) give Obama, on average, a 2-4% advantage nationally.&nbsp;</p> <p>The problem for both candidates: neither crosses the 50% mark, suggesting a large undecided block as well as support for neither or for third party candidates. Of course, the importance of this threshold declines in relation to third party support (now at around 5% on average for Nader and Barr combined). If these numbers increase considerably--as they did in 1992 for Ross Perot, who wound up with 19% of the vote--then, of course, it is likely that neither Obama nor McCain will win a majority of the electorate in a relatively close race. (In 1992, Clinton's margin of victory was 5.5%, but he won with only 43% of the vote).</p> <p>But, of course, American presidential elections are not won on the basis of the national popular vote. Thus the literal tie seen in the poll averages of a number of key swing states--Ohio, Virginia, and Nevada, for example--may indeed suggest a race that will go down to the wire.</p> 2008-08-14T12:18:57-04:00 7 true 2008-08-14T12:26:50-04:00 2008-09-30T01:27:20-04:00