Posted Jun 01, 2009 at 10:30 AM by Maurice Berger
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. 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):
Tagged: 2009, presidential approval ratings, President Barack Obama, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton
Posted Jan 09, 2009 at 1:52 AM by Maurice Berger
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, according to a recent national poll 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: 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 recent CNN/Opinion Research survey 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 Washington Post/ABC News 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. PollTrack will closely watch these numbers over the next few months to see if this extraidinary public goodwill continues and flourishes.
Tagged: PRESIDENT-ELECT Barack Obama, voter expectations, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan
Posted Dec 04, 2008 at 1:22 PM by Maurice Berger
Gallup is out with an interesting analysis of the approval ratings of lame duck presidents, evaluations that usually rise as the leader's terms drwas to an end: "It is common for presidents who are about to leave the White House to
receive a bump in their job approval ratings between Election Day and
Inauguration Day. Of the eight post-World War II presidents who left
office after serving two terms, declining to seek an additional term,
or being defeated for re-election, six saw increased job approval
ratings in their final two-plus months in office . . . The largest spike occurred for the elder George Bush, of whom only 34%
of Americans approved in October 1992, shortly before Bill Clinton
defeated him for re-election. Immediately after the election, Bush's
approval rating jumped to 43%, and by the time he left office, his
rating had increased further to 56% -- a remarkable increase of 22
percentage points . . . Harry S. Truman and Jimmy Carter are the only two post-World War II presidents
whose approval ratings did not improve after their successors were
selected." Recent public opinion polls indicate that George W. Bush's end-of-term popularity registers a modest rise, on average +4%.
Tagged: George W. Bush, George H. W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan
Posted Aug 24, 2008 at 9:25 AM by Maurice Berger
In a survey conducted yesterday and published this morning, Rasmussen Reports finds that 39% of voters believe that Obama made the right choice in selecting Biden as his running mate; 25% disagreed and another 35% are not sure. Women were less enthusiastic than men of the pick—33% of women say
Biden was the right choice while 27% disagreed. It appears from these limited and early numbers that Biden may not resolve Obama's problem with Hillary Clinton's most ardent female supporters.
In another flash poll completed yesterday by Gallup, the numbers suggest that the new VP nominee may have little effect on most voters: only 14% say that the selection of Biden makes them more likely to support Obama. 7% say less likely; 72% replied that it will have no effect at all.
A word of caution: it may take weeks or even months to understand the full effect of a VP pick. And most often, the VP candidate has only a modest effect, at best, on the outcome of a presidential election. In 1988, for example, Democrat Michael Dukakis lost with a running mate considered strong by most observers, Sen. Lloyd Bentson (D-Texas); his opponent Republican George H. W. Bush won, even though his choice, Sen. Dan Quayle (R-Indiana), was widely perceived as weak and inexperienced.
Tagged: Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, George H. W. Bush, Michael Dukakis
