Here's ABC News, "Trouble Looms for Obama, Democrats with Election Day 2014 Approaching" (via Memeorandum):
Barack Obama and his political party are heading into the midterm elections in trouble. The president’s 40 percent job approval rating in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll is the lowest of his career – and the Democratic Party’s popularity is its weakest in polling back 30 years, with more than half of Americans seeing the party unfavorably for the first time.More.
The Republican Party is even more unpopular. But benefitting from their supporters’ greater likelihood of voting, GOP candidates nonetheless hold a 50-43 percent lead among likely voters for U.S. House seats in the Nov. 4 election.
These and other results are informed by an array of public concerns on issues from the economy to international terrorism to the Ebola virus, crashing into a long-running crisis of confidence in the nation’s political leadership. Almost two-thirds say the country is headed seriously off on the wrong track. Even more, three-quarters, are dissatisfied with the way the political system is working.
Scorn is widely cast: Among those who are dissatisfied with the political system, two-thirds say both sides are equally to blame, with the rest dividing evenly between Obama and his party, vs. the Republicans in Congress, as the chief culprits. But as a nearly six-year incumbent president, Obama – and by extension his party – are most at risk.
Beyond his overall rating, Obama is at career lows in approval for his handling of immigration, international affairs and terrorism (long his best issue) in this poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates. Approval of his handling of the conflict with Islamic State insurgents in Iraq and Syria has plummeted by percentage 15 points in the last two weeks, amid questions about the progress of the air campaign now under way.
Further, while Obama’s negative rating on handling the economy has eased, more Americans say they’ve gotten worse off rather than better off under his presidency; the plurality is “about the same” financially, for most not a happy outcome. Even with the recovery to date, 77 percent are worried about the economy’s future, and 57 percent say the country has been experiencing a long-term decline in living standards – all grim assessments as Election Day looms.
Such views can carry a punch. An analysis conducted for this report shows that presidential approval ratings (in data since 1946) and views that the country’s on the right track (since 1974) highly correlate with midterm gains or losses for the party in power. (The correlations are .68 and .65, respectively; 0 means no relationship and 1 is a perfect, positive fit.)
Moreover, an index of dissatisfaction, also produced for this study, finds that the public’s unease on a range of issues strongly predicts vote preferences; these wide-ranging concerns emerge as a key factor in the 2014 contest. In addition to persistent doubts about the economy, for instance, 71 percent express worry about a terrorist attack and 65 percent say they’re concerned about an Ebola epidemic – disquieting sentiments when confidence in the political system is so weak. (Details of the dissatisfaction index will be covered in a separate report tomorrow.)
History, for its part, offers the Democrats cold comfort. Obama’s approval rating matches George W. Bush’s heading into the 2006 midterms, when the Republicans lost 30 seats. The only postwar president numerically lower heading into a second midterm was Harry Truman, at 39 percent approval, in 1950; his Democrats lost 28 seats. While race-by-race assessments don’t suggest those kinds of losses this year, the comparison adds context to the GOP’s upper hand.
Such results also help explain why Obama is attending his first public campaign rally of 2014 only today, for Gov. Dan Malloy of Connecticut.
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