Rasmussen: Obama strong disapproval rises; Update: Zogby shows Obama at 48%

posted at 9:50 am on July 26, 2009 by Ed Morrissey
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Rasmussen has its first tracking poll taken with numbers entirely generated from after Barack Obama’s trainwreck press conference, and to no one’s surprise, his numbers have continued to decline.  While his overall job approval remained constant at 49%, those who strongly disapprove of Obama’s performance increased again to 40%, while those who strongly approve retreated to 29%.  The strongly-disapprove number has increased five points since the press conference, and the illusion of moderate, post-partisan leadership has been stripped:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows that 29% of the nation’s voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty percent (40%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -11. That’s the first time his ratings have reached double digits in negative territory …

These updates are based upon nightly telephone interviews and reported on a three-day rolling average basis. Today is the first update based entirely upon interviews conducted after the President’s prime time televised press conference. The number who Strongly Approve of the President has remained unchanged since the press conference but the number who Strongly Disapprove has gone up by five percentage points (from 35% on Wednesday morning to 40% today). …

The President is now seen as politically liberal by 76%. That’s up six points from a month ago, 11 points since he was elected, and the highest total to date. Forty-eight percent (48%) now see him as Very Liberal, up 20 points since he was elected.

Tax-and-spend programs will do that.  Ever since Barack Obama arrived in Washington, he’s gone on a Blame America tour abroad and spent money (or at least tried to spend money) at an astonishing rate not seen in decades.  America has awoken to the fact that they elected a radical, not a moderate, which they might have known had the media done its job on Barack Obama’s political track record in and out of office, as David Freddoso did in his book The Case Against Barack Obama.

Obama also got hammered on his response to the arrest of Henry Gates.  In polling taken on Friday and Saturday, after the White House has started its retreat on Obama’s assertion that the police “acted stupidly,” only 26% believed that Obama’s answer was “good” or “excellent”.  Sixty-three percent rated it “fair” or poor”, as did 40% of Democrats and 67% of independents.  Black voters supported Obama 71%-28%, but they voted for Obama in the last election 96%-4%, which indicates ambivalence even in this demographic (only 21% rated it “excellent”).  Obama lost a plurality of the youngest voters, 49%-45%, but lost all others by large majorities ranging from 60%-73%.

But was it right to ask the question in the first place?   Lynn Sweet gets second-guessed by a narrow plurality overall, 43%-41%, and most interestingly, by a majority of black voters, 58%-28%.

I doubt we’ll see any prime-time press conferences for a while.  I also think it may be a while before Lynn Sweet gets to ask a question at any Obama press briefing.

Update: I meant to include the latest Zogby polling, released on Friday.  Downside: It’s Zogby.  Upside … well, it’s Zogby:

A new Zogby Interactive survey shows a slight decline in President Barack Obama’s job approval, with 48% of likely voters now approving of the job he is doing as president, down from 51% who said the same in an interactive/telephone hybrid poll conducted in mid-June. Forty-nine percent now say they disapprove of the job the president has done so far in office and 4% are not sure.

The survey found similar results when likely voters were asked specifically to rate President Obama’s performance—47% give him a positive rating, with 22% rating his job performance as “excellent” and 25% rating it as “good.” But slightly more than half (53%) give the president a negative job performance rating, with 10% who say he is doing a “fair” job as president and 43% who say he is doing a “poor” job—up from 36% who said he was doing a poor job in mid-June.

Zogby’s sample is almost 4500 likely voters, with a claimed MOE of 1.5%.  Some on the Left claim Rasmussen skews rightward, while those on the Right tend to think of Zogby leaning the other direction.  In this case, they’re coming up with the same numbers.  Zogby’s polling includes two days prior to the Obama presser; keep an eye on the next survey.

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