Fresh on the heels of yesterday’s poll showing that support for Barack Obama is collapsing in America’s leading political bellwether, today we learn that Virginians are souring on the president as well:
A new Public Policy Polling survey looking at how likely voters for this fall’s election view Barack Obama finds his approval rating at just 48%, with 46% disapproving.
A poll looking at his numbers among an even year general electorate would likely be more favorable because of the greater number of African Americans and young voters that would be represented but PPP is gauging approval ratings in the context of the Gubernatorial race.
Obama’s reviews are highly polarized with 95% of Democrats but only 9% of Republicans giving him good marks. His overall numbers are weak due to poor numbers among independents- 52% of them say they disapprove of Obama’s performance with only 38% giving him favorable ones.
Frankly, even I didn’t expect the Obama spell to wear off this quickly. It’s beginning to seem that no matter where you turn, political independents and ’soft’ Obama supporters are contracting OFS - Obama Fatigue Syndrome. The bad news for Obama is, he can only be new and exciting once.
And by the way - Public Policy Polling is considered a Democrat-leaning firm.
So I guess it's up to me then.
Kenny Solomon Wednesday, July 8th at 1:18PM EDT (link)Right…… This was too easy.
Here it comes…… You can snark me after you groan then laugh……. Don’t say I didn’t try and warn you…….
Yes, Virginia. There is no Barack-O-Claus.
Cheers !
Of course you can have my guns……. Bullets first.
I didn’t say rounds, shells or magazines……
I said bullets first.
ROFL!
David Hinz Wednesday, July 8th at 1:46PM EDT (link)I love good puns…
….but I will settle for this one.
The Minority Report — The HinzSight Report — TMRB.tv — MFOB “Miss Tagart, do you know the hallmark of the second-rater? It’s resentment of another man’s achievement.”
Really Good News For GOP
DavidSage Wednesday, July 8th at 1:55PM EDT (link)Virginia is a good bellwether state to spot political trends. If Obama is only polling at a 48% approval rating there, he’s in for some rough times ahead.
I was amazed at how quickly the state of Virginia became a traditional Red state to becoming a Blue state, but it looks like it got a taste of the true nature of liberalism, and the spell is wearing off.
Wrong numbers
kenochs Wednesday, July 8th at 2:46PM EDT (link)Whoa there Tex. If you actually look at the results you’ll find some weird results floating around.
http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/PPP_Release_VA_708.pdf
If you go down to the poll results and dig around you’ll find something very odd in the top poll moderates (as opposed to liberals or conservatives) give Obama a 58 percent approval rating while 34 percent of moderates disapprove and 7 percent aren’t sure.
Go down further and you’ll see the breakdown among people who identify themselves as Rep. Dem or Other. It’s the ‘other’ category which PPP call independents where Obama gets the lower ratings. In this particular instance, I think it would be helpful to see how many people actually identified themselves as ‘other’ as it feels like there’s a weird skew in the polling.
Anyway (I called PPP to check it out but didn’t get a return).
"Moderates" and "Independents" Are Not The Same Thing
IJB Wednesday, July 8th at 3:10PM EDT (link)This accounts for the discrepancy.
“Independents” are simply people who are not (or describe themselves as not) belonging to one of the two major parties, or to *any* political party (depending on which poll is doing the asking).
This is truly a ‘catch-all’ group which can include anyone from people who nearly always vote R or D but simply aren’t registered as such, to truly politically “independent” types, to people who probably vote once out of every 20 years!
“Moderates”, OTOH, *can* belong to a political party. In fact, “moderate” is how most Democrats and (operational) liberals actually self-describe themselves! - most Leftists realize that liberal is pretty much a pejorative term among many political segments, and so refrain from (accurately) describing themselves as such.
Anyway, most of the people who describe themselves as “moderates” are registered Dems, plus a few oddball types who can legitimately described as “RINOs”, with only a very few true “moderate independents”.
Thus, it doesn’t surprise me the self-described, so-called moderates heavily “approve” of Obama - most of them are really liberal Dems in the first place!!
I'm not so sure
kenochs Wednesday, July 8th at 3:23PM EDT (link)I see your point, but I’m don’t buy it. I think you can take your whole post replace the words Democrats and Liberals with Republican and Conservatives and the post would be just as legitimate.
Truly without context or polling over time, it doesn’t seem to me that you can draw any real conclusions. After all, polling among ‘independents’ might have very well broken down this way before the election for all we know.
One thing that does seem to be consistent is that the political divide in this country is astounding when it comes to BHO, but those folks who don’t feel completely comfortable identifying themselves with either party are a voting bloc (I can’t tell the numbers), and from what I see in this poll that group is basically centrist and if you add the independents and the moderates together you have support for Obama breaking about the same as the overall support for Obama when you factor in hardline GOP’ers and Democrats.
To further buttress your point, IJB, w/the Republican
eburke Wednesday, July 8th at 5:02PM EDT (link)brand being so damaged right now (thanks to those in our party who made us indistinguishable from much of the Dem economic platform) there are many Independents who probably have conservative leanings but for a variety of reasons don’t desire to be identified w/the Republican brand right now.
IMHO, your parsing of the difference between ‘moderates’ and independents is dead on.
“All that need be done for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”
“Dead fish go with the flow” ~ izoneguy
“We have a Statue of Liberty not a Statue of Necessity” ~ ColdWarrior
Maybe not wrong numbers.
Flagstaff Wednesday, July 8th at 3:15PM EDT (link)I think a lot of Democrats identified themselves as “moderate” in the poll. Easy as that. After all, Nancy Pelosi thinks she represents mainstream America. She might well call herself a moderate. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine would say they are, too. And all three would support Obama.
Knowing there were 617 subjects polled, you can back into the raw numbers corresponding to each percentage, with a bit of work in parallel equations.
Pluto, the Ninth Planet - Forever!
Maybe you're right
kenochs Wednesday, July 8th at 3:30PM EDT (link)Maybe you’re right, the breakdown presupposes that neither Democrats or Republicans are ‘moderate’ in their thinking and that breakdown seems a bit odd to me.
Is a ‘blue dog’ a Democrat or a moderate? Difficult distinction according to this poll. The whole thing feels a bit too loosy goosy to me.
Plus I hate parallel equations….
It might be simpler than that,
Flagstaff Wednesday, July 8th at 6:41PM EDT (link)but I’m to lazy to try to figure it out.
Here’s a bit about Blue Dog Democrats.
I guess by definition all Blue Dogs are Democrats who are “moderate-to-conservative,” particularly on fiscal issues.
Pluto, the Ninth Planet - Forever!
I live in the epicenter of blue Virginia territory
ciscoguy Wednesday, July 8th at 3:35PM EDT (link)and I know a lot of people who pulled the lever for Barry.
Here’s my take: unlike Ohio, there aren’t a lot of blue-collar workers here who honestly (however foolishly) thought they would be better served with Obama. It’s mostly youngish professionals who didn’t like Bush and became enamored with the hopenchange message. Sure, there are a lot of people tuned in and following him closely (after all, this is the DC metro area), but I feel like just like any novelty, the luster of our American Idol president is wearing off. It’s hard to give uplifting campaign-style speeches while you actually have to govern.
That’s a big reason I think this guy is going to be a 1-termer. Besides having to defend his disastrous policies, the appeal of this guy was the belief (among his supporters) that he was going to be great. Sticking his chin out in the air and telling people to reach for the stars only really works the first time around or if you’re seeking re-election on the heels of a terrific first term. The democrats are still going to be there for him, but it’s the independents who swing the national elections.
In the field of Huckabee, Romney and Palin, I think Romney would fare the best in this state. If Palin decides to run and gets the nomination, however, I feel like she’ll have a tough time getting a lot of the swing voters in this region. Same goes for Huckabee, but to a much lesser extent. The liberal media has unfortunately done a good job of demonizing them as ultra-conservative holy rollers, and that message resonates with a lot of the secularists in this area. Things will have to be really bad economy-wise for Palin to really succeed in northern VA, but if she does, it will be because Obama has been an unmitigated disaster (which is shaping up to be the case, anyway).
I love Sarah and would sign for her in a heartbeat over President Soetoro, but I also want to make absolutely sure we don’t have him for another 4 years. I know Mitt’s not too popular in the deeper south, but I think he’d carry those states regardless, particularly if Obama continues on the current trajectory.
This is good news for the Governors race in VA at year end
Scope Wednesday, July 8th at 4:06PM EDT (link)McDonnell consistently polled in the lead by double digits against all three D candidates. Right after the D nomination of Deeds, he took the lead slightly. The latest polls in VA now show McDonnell ahead 49% to Deeds 43%. I wonder if this had anything to do with Obamas staged townhall in NOVA to sell his healthcare pill? I hope they call to poll me, I’ll add a little lead to his poll numbers.
Dirty Pool
OccamsRazor Thursday, July 9th at 12:28AM EDT (link)I’m already seeing situations where Dems are pulling up McDonnell signs and replacing w/ Deeds’.