CNN poll: Obama's job approval hits new low at 41%

Not much data here, but Ed’s had all the fun lately with national polls showing O’s approval rating crashing through the basement. I’m grabbing this one.

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An interesting detail in the numbers: It’s not O-Care that spurred the crash, it’s the double whammy of the IRS scandal and Snowden’s revelations about the NSA over the summer that did it. That drove him down to what appeared to be a floor of 44 percent or so. Then ObamaCare launched and it turned out that wasn’t the floor after all.

“The drop in Obama’s approval rating comes entirely among suburbanites,” said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. “Compared to the October CNN poll, positive views of Obama held steady among people who live in big cities and rural areas. But in the suburbs, his approval rating was 45% a month ago but has dropped to just 37% now.”

The President’s overall job approval rating is down three points since mid-October after being stuck in the mid-40s for several months in CNN polling. But it’s worth noting that Obama’s woes did not begin with the disastrous launch of the HealthCare.gov website in October, Holland pointed out.

“The real damage came in June, when reports about NSA spying and IRS treatment of conservative groups caused an eight-point drop in his approval rating – a far more significant change than what the numbers from October suggest,” he said.

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Look closely at the crosstabs and you’ll see that CNN found virtually no slippage in his approval between late September and mid-October. He held steady at 44 percent between 9/29 and 10/20. That’s significant because, in the interim, the shutdown had come and gone and Healthcare.gov had been rolled out to disastrous results. Why, a month later, has his rating finally slipped further? Could be that the endless repair job on the website has caused people to lose patience, but my guess is that it’s the Big Lie, not Healthcare.gov, that finally broke through the floor. The website is evidence of incompetence but voters had already accepted some degree of that from O. What many of them hadn’t accepted until recently is that he can be quite the egregious liar when he’s trying to get something passed. You see a similar trend in RCP’s poll average of his job approval. He’s basically flat from the beginning of October until the very end, throughout the shutdown and Healthcare.gov’s debut, and then as the media pays more attention to his “if you like your plan” deception in November, the lines start to move:

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His net approval on October 30th was -7.7. Today it’s nearly double at -15. For some voters, the trust is gone. That’s why there’s a new floor and that’s why his favorable rating, not just his approval rating, has begun crashing too.

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The fact that he’s fading with suburbanites seems significant too. Urban areas are mostly Democratic and rural areas are mostly Republican, so their respective takes on O are baked in the cake. Suburbanites are more of a swing group; Romney won them last year according to the national exit polls, but only very narrowly at 50/48. If Obama’s now at 37 percent among that group, Democrats on the Hill must be reaching for their sick bags. On the other hand, there are some demographics that will answer the bell for O no matter how badly he and his new health-care boondoggle attempt to screw them. Check out his job approval among adults aged 18 to 34:

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Here’s what happens when you ask people whether they’d prefer to see Obama or congressional Republicans have more influence over the direction America takes next year. Another big skew among young’uns:

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Like I said the other day about the ABC/WaPo poll, I can understand his job approval being unusually high among the poor and lower middle class, as it is here — they’re the ones who are lined up for ObamaCare subsidies, after all — but I can’t understand why young adults continue to give him higher marks than everyone else. “Young healthies” are ObamaCare’s biggest losers, which is par for the course for O: When it comes to some segment of the population being hosed by his policies, the young are usually the go-to fall guys. On the other hand, that’s one honking big margin of error at 8.5 percent. He’s probably not doing quite as well with young adults as 51/44, although it seems like a safe bet that he’s still a bit more highly rated by them than the rest of the population. If they ever abandon him, though, look out. Who knows how low the next floor will be.

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David Strom 12:30 PM | April 23, 2024
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