Approval For Obama Down Under 40% Among Independents

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Written By:
Rob Port

Jul 7, 2010
2:08pm

And things really aren’t looking good for Democrats in general.

From the Top of the Ticket:

Two new polls this morning augur ill for President Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats who control Congress.

The worst — from Gallup — finds that for the first time since Obama took the oath, his support among independents, a key voter segment in his decisive 2008 coalition election win, has fallen below 40%. The new tracking finds that Obama’s support among all voter segments has declined in the past year, but nowhere more than among independents.

Only 38% now support him, an 18-point drop from 52 weeks ago, when polls first began showing the nation’s rapidly-growing population of independent voters peeling off, as Obama relentlessly pushed his healthcare plan and ignored polls saying jobs and the economy were uppermost on voters’ minds. …

Also out this morning, a new Harris Poll of 2,227 adults finds widespread dissatisfaction and disenchantment with leading Democrats in Washington. Only 26% have a favorable view of Vice President Joe Biden’s job performance, while nearly half (45%) have a negative view of his job.

Only one-in-five approve of the job done by California’s own Speaker Nancy Pelosi, while nearly half (49%) give her negative reviews.

Of course, this isn’t necessarily translating into high marks for Republicans. Democrats in Congress have a 54% disapproval. Republicans have a 52% disapproval.

Clearly, Democrats (and Obama and the rest of the Democrat leadership in particular) are bearing the brunt of public dissatisfaction, but I have a feeling that if Republicans were still in charge we’d see the same dissatisfaction.

People, I think, are less upset with Democrats specifically or even Republicans specifically than they’re upset with the way they’re being governed in general. I think a lot of Americans are having a hard time seeing distinctive, substantive policy differences between Republicans and Democrats.

That’s something Republicans need to fix if they want the majority they’re probably going to win the House (and maybe the Senate?) this fall to be something more than fleeting.