Fox News poll: Obama at … 43% approval

His favorable rating’s exactly one point higher than … the IRS’s. And the IRS’s rating is several points higher than both the Democrats’ and the Republicans’ ratings. Never mind that Gallup poll on incumbency from this morning: If you want to appreciate how widely and deeply loathed both parties have become, meditate on the fact that Americans now feel more warmly about their taxman.

Anyway, a new low for The One, down three points from last month. I wonder why.

Among the key group of independent voters, 38 percent favor the [new health-care] law and 55 percent oppose it. When voting this November, more than twice as many independents say they are less likely (39 percent) to vote for a candidate who favored the bill than say more likely (18 percent)…

Overall, 38 percent say they would be less likely to vote for a candidate who voted for the bill, while 22 percent say more likely. For another 38 percent it won’t make a difference…

A majority of voters think Speaker Pelosi and House Democrats changed the rules (54 percent) to get health care passed — almost twice as many as think they played by the rules (29 percent)…

Since the law’s passage, the number of Democrats saying they are “extremely” or “very” interested in the elections remains unchanged at 50 percent, while a significantly larger number of Republicans — 69 percent — are at least very interested.

Check the crosstabs and you’ll see that the number who are “very interested” or “extremely interested” in the elections is pretty much the same for both parties as it was in February. That’s mildly surprising for the GOP given anger over O-Care’s passage but very surprising for Democrats in light of the incessant nutroots propaganda about what an invigorating victory passing the bill would be for their base.

This is interesting too:

The pollster spins that second question in terms of four out of five people being unhappy with the new law, but the fine print’s in the first question. The number who think it goes too far is only slightly greater than the number who think it’s fine as is plus the number who think it — gulp — doesn’t go far enough. That’s good news for blocking further attempts to expand the program, not so good news for repealing the damned thing. On the other hand, contra The One’s idiotic talking point about how this is going to ultimately reduce the deficit, fully 65 percent think O-Care is likely to drive us further into debt and Democrats themselves are split 40/40 on the subject. As I’ve said before, this is why the bad polling isn’t going away: The debt will be a critical issue for years to come, and for years to come there’ll be no evidence that O-Care is doing anything by way of savings. A bad, bad combo.

Finally, there’s this:

Obviously that’s a much bigger problem for Democrats, who ideally would benefit tremendously from a sitting president’s coattails, but it does go to show how Sarahcuda needs to pick her spots. She may be suffering in part here because the tea party’s net favorable rating is down too — from 35/22 in February to 36/34 now. Never underestimate the power of a persistent media narrative to shape opinion.

Oh, almost forgot:

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