Obama's approval drop in North Carolina

Since April Barack Obama has dropped from a peak approval rating of 54% in our North Carolina polling to now just 46%. A deeper analysis of where that decline is occurring finds that it's hard to pin on any one group:

Obama Approval	April	August	Change
Moderate Independents	67	51	-16
Conservative Independents	15	4	-11
Moderate Democrats	91	83	-8
Conservative Democrats	60	52	-8
Moderate Republicans	23	16	-7
Conservative Republicans	9	5	-4
Liberal Democrats	95	95	0

The groups with the least movement are at the opposite sides of the political spectrum. Liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans both had their minds firmly made up about Obama months ago- the former group generally thinks he can do no wrong and the latter group thinks he can't do anything right.

The largest drops have come among independents on both the moderate and conservative parts of the spectrum. Independent voters both in North Carolina and nationally have been increasingly expressing a desire for more divided government, something that could hurt Democratic prospects for taking out Richard Burr next year and may even cause problems for the party in legislative elections.

Moderate Democrats and conservative Democrats have had a similar eight point drop, although an 83% approval figure with moderate Democrats is still very impressive for Obama. The fact that he's barely over 50% approval with the conservative wing of his party should be a point of concern for Obama though and it looks like health care may be hurting him with those voters, as just 30% of them say they are with Obama on that issue.

It is certainly not panic time for Obama when it comes to his approval rating in the state, but there probably is going to have to be some turnaround in the economy for his numbers to get back to where they were four months ago.