Pollsters live and die by the soundness of their sampling techniques. Over the last decade or so, Scott Rasmussen has done fairly well. You can see his Daily Presidential Tracking Poll here.
Obviously, Obama is not as popular as when he was first elected. This is not surprising. His popularity fluctuates -- also not surprising. What did surprise me were where the spikes in disapproval fall.
There is a very sharp spike around January and February of 2010, when the Obamacare bill was forced through Congress in such a flagrantly ugly way. The strongly disapprove as well as the strongly approve numbers hit high points.
But there is also a spike of strong disapproval around November of 2009, during elections in Virginia and New Jersey that put Republicans in both those statehouses.
There is another spike around November of 2010 which coincides with the Republicans regaining control of the House as well as widespread losses by Democrats in state and local elections.
Oddly enough, the graph shows a rise in disapproval around mid-October of 2011.
The graphs would seem to indicate that Obama's approval rolls with the seasons. As an election day approaches, those who strongly disapprove of him grow in numbers. There may be other factors such as the state of the stock market, gasoline prices, political or social unrest domestically or in the world at large that are contaminating the results. I'm not going to go back and try to match up the headlines to the spikes.
The sense that I get is that Obama would be better off is the election were held in July or around Christmas. People seem to be more magnanimous or possibly to be paying less attention at those times. I also think the more Obama shows up on our television sets, the more he insists on interjecting himself into our lives, the higher his disapproval grows. Out of sight, out of mind. As long as he leaves us alone, we don't feel as much animosity toward him.
At least some don't.
No comments:
Post a Comment