Based on the last few weeks of our polling I'd say Barack Obama's New Years/post-Tucson poll bounce is over. Here are some of the reasons I've reached that conclusion:
-Our last two weekly national surveys for Daily Kos have found Obama back with slightly negative approval numbers. This week he's at 46/49 and last week he was at 47/48. The main reason he's down from his high water mark of 50/45 in late January? Independents have turned back against him. At that point he had a 53/41 approval with them. Now it's back to being almost the inverse of that at 43/51.
Other pollsters have shown a similar drop from where Obama was a month ago. A month ago Gallup had Obama at 51/41, now it's 46/45. Rasmussen had Obama at 50/49, now it's 44/55. CBS had it at 49/39, now at 48/41. It's not necessarily a huge decline for Obama, but across the board polls are finding that he has weakened a little bit.
-On our national 2012 Presidential poll last week Obama led Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, and Mitt Romney by an average of 7.3 points each. That's a solid performance and would certainly be enough to get him reelected, but it's down from the average lead of 9.8 points we found for Obama against that quartet last month.
We've seen a similar downward trend in Obama's advantage in North Carolina, the only individual state where we've done a 2012 poll each of the last two months. In the numbers we'll release tomorrow Obama has an average advantage of 4 points over the Republicans tested. Again that's solid, but it does represent a downward movement from last month when he led them by an average of 5.5 points.
Obama's current position is not bad- but it's a lot more similar to where he was during the last half of 2010 than it is to his great polling month of January.
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ReplyDeleteBounce has receded slightly would be more accurate. Your own national poll was 49-46 last week and seemed to lag the trend when it began, the CBS change is statistically insignificant, Gallup was 51-42 a couple days ago and seems to be bouncing about quite a bit, and Rasmussen is, well, Rasmussen.
ReplyDeleteI concur with this analysis, but the question is, why?
ReplyDeleteDoes it have anything to do with the changes taking place in the Middle East? Or with the union-busting movement?
I think it's just that bounces fade a little. Popularity ebbs and flows. It's surely not a drastic change, and it's not as if his bounce was huge or sudden to begin with. Regardless, he's still in strong shape for 2012.
ReplyDeleteOf interest in Daily Kos most recent numbers which author did not mention is Favorable/Unfavorable stats for Obama vs GOP & Democrats:
ReplyDeleteObama 49/46 (+3)
GOP 36/50 (-14)
Dems 42/48 (-6)
And for Approve/Disapprove:
Obama 46/49 (-3)
Boehner 30/32 (-2)
McConnell 19/38 (-19)
Analyzing Obama stats without including fluctuations across-the- board and comparing with his opposition is an incomplete exercise for me. When you do so above, Obama enjoys significantly higher Favorability and Approval when compared to Congressional GOP and GOP leaders...interesting, given that GOP keeps telling us that their recent House Majority's actions are the realization of "the mandate" they were given by the American People last November!