Poll: Independents reject Obama’s “jobs bill” 53% to 33%; likability below 50%

posted at 1:30 pm on September 21, 2011 by Howard Portnoy
[ Elections ]   

Despite magical thinking on the part of some on the left, who hope against hope that the president’s jobs bill will bring lost independent voters back into the fold,a new poll suggests otherwise.

Conducted by Public Opinion Strategies, the poll shows a 20-percent gap between support for the American Jobs Act and rejection of it among independents. Only 33% favor the bill while 53% oppose it. The numbers are roughly in sync with the president’s overall job approval rating among independent voters, which Gallup fixed at 38% in July.

More telling is that Democrats are evenly split, 47% to 47%, over the question of whether Congress should “pass this bill right away,” as the president has been urging repeatedly, or “take a closer look.” The implied reluctance to look before leaping suggests that even the president’s base has learned from the experience of ObamaCare, which then-speaker Nancy Pelosi said Congress would need to pass “to find out what’s in it.”

More telling still is the finding of another poll that suggests the president’s last bastion of hope—his vaunted charisma—is beginning to fade. The poll, a joint venture of the Washington Post and ABC News, reveals that the number of Americans who hold a favorable impression of the man has, for the first time since he was elected, fallen below 50%. Specifically, 47%say they view Obama, the person,favorably,while46% say they do not.

Among independents, the demographic that many view as the make-or-break factor in his re-election, the number who view the president unfavorably is 48%. The number of independents with a strongfavorable viewof Obama, the man,has fallento a new low of 14%as compared with the number who harbor strongly unfavorableviews, which is twice the number, at 28%.

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• Poll: More than half of voters do not believe Obama deserves a second term
• American Jobs Act: Liberal media still a sucker for Obama’s empty rhetoric

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