Obama hits low in Quinnipiac approval rating

The public relations push at the White House has really flopped.  Not only have the economic indicators made a mockery of Joe Biden’s “Recovery Summer,” even Barack Obama’s approval ratings refuse to respond.  The latest national survey from Quinnipiac of registered voters give Obama their lowest approval rating of his presidency, 44%, with 48% disapproving:

A year after President Barack Obama’s political honeymoon ended, his job approval rating has dropped to a negative 44 – 48 percent, his worst net score ever, and American voters say by a narrow 39 – 36 percent margin that they would vote for an unnamed Republican rather than President Obama in 2012, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.

This compares to a 48 – 43 percent approval for Obama in a May 26 national poll by the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University and a 57 – 33 percent approval last July, just before the political firestorm created by opposition to his health care plan galvanized political opponents and turned independent voters against him.

That’s a nine-point swing in two months, which indicates that Obama isn’t getting credit for his “successes,” as CNN’s Julian Zelizer argued this week.  Obama has managed to move his agenda through Congress, which political analysts like Zelizer are now arguing should be a positive metric for Obama.  However, it’s not really difficult to move an agenda when a President has a 75-seat majority in the House and an 18-seat majority in the Senate.  The fact that it took nine months to give birth to ObamaCare under those conditions should be an indicator of both incompetence and inflexibility, not success.

Quinnipiac’s poll has lots of bad news for Obama besides the overall approval rating.  Independents have an even worse opinion of Obama, 38/52, and a plurality of 37% will vote for a Republican in 2012.  That’s a mainstream point of view, too; only 40% think Obama deserves re-election, while 48% say he doesn’t.

He doesn’t get better news on the issues, either:

Voter approval of the President’s handling of some of the nation’s problems shows:

• Disapprove 56 – 39 percent of his handling of the economy;
• Disapprove 46 – 43 percent of his handling of foreign policy;
• Disapprove 51 – 41 percent of his handling of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill;
• Disapprove 58 – 30 percent of his handling of illegal immigration;
• Approve 46 – 34 percent of his nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court.

The Q-poll also rebuts the strange flip in the Gallup survey on the generic Congressional balloting.  This poll shows Republicans beating Democrats on that question by five points, 43/38.    That is an 11-point flip since May, and a 13-point swing from last summer.  Among independents, the split is even more pronounced, 44/29.

It’s Recovery Summer, all right … for Republicans.

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