Independents Increasingly Disapprove of Obama
In a poll (latest Wall Street Journal/NBC poll) which vastly oversamples Democrats (41% of respondents are Democrats, 29% Republican whereas Gallup shows a much narrower split), a considerable plurality of Americans, 45% think the “stimulus” was a bad idea compared to 34% who think it was a good idea. If you adjusted those numbers to reflect the real party break-down in the United States, it could be as many as half of all Americans doubt the effectiveness of the “stimulus.”
But, the real striking number is the poll was not the oversampling of Democrats, but that of the number of independents disapproving of the President’s performance:
For the first time, independent voters — who delivered Mr. Obama the White House and Democrats control of Congress — disapprove of the job he is doing, by 46% compared with the 41% who approve. In July, 49% of independents approved of the president, against 38% who disapproved.
NBC (& even the Wall Street Journal!) tries to spin this as showing the President making gains on health care and the economy, but as Allahpundit points out
. . . the gains are so slight as to be within the margin of error. A plurality still opposes the public option (46/48, up slightly from 43/47 in August but still down from 46/44 in July) and 59 percent say they’d either prefer or demand that a mandate to buy insurance not be included in the final bill.
The August poll had the same skewed partisan numbers (41-29) which may account for the appearance of movement in the President’s numbers. Gallup found that during the month of August the partisan gap narrowed by four points from a 9-point Democratic advantage in July (47-38 with leaners) to a 5-point advantage (45-40 again with leaners), the WSJ/NBC News poll shows almost no movement in favor of Obamacare.
And why are people moving away from the President? Well, to paraphrase a post I once wrote, “It’s the Spending, Stupid.”
Even without reflecting the movement away from Democrats (which their survey of Independents suggested).
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Like trying to find an honest man in Congress, it’s going to get increasingly harder to find any independent who will admit voting for Obama.
That is terrific news for the 2010 and 2012 elections.
Comment by Michigan-Matt — September 24, 2009 @ 11:24 am - September 24, 2009
[...] Independents Increasingly Disapprove of Obama [...]
Pingback by GayPatriot » Pelosi’s Last Term as Speaker — September 24, 2009 @ 1:36 pm - September 24, 2009
An interesting video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ziaJI0C5xk&feature=player_embedded#t=116
Comment by Steven E. Kalbach — September 25, 2009 @ 7:26 pm - September 25, 2009