AP poll puts Obama at 56% approval rating

I’ve gotten a few e-mails about the latest AP poll, which gives Obama a 56% approval rating — far above Gallup, Rasmussen, and practically every other pollster.  In fact, AP’s survey of 1000 adults has Obama’s approval rating improving over last month, most definitely in opposition to the large surveys taken even in Gallup’s own survey of adults.  But even the AP analysis notes that his approval rating seems somewhat disconnected to the “squeamish” reaction to Obama’s policies:

The latest Associated Press-Gfk poll shows the president’s popularity holding steady, with 56 percent of those polled approving of the way he’s taking care of the country’s business. His marks for handling the 8-year-old war in Afghanistan have jumped by double digits, with more than half now approving, since he capped a three-month strategy review by announcing a big troop increase.

But despite his prime-time TV speech explaining how he reached his decision to boost U.S. forces in Afghanistan to 100,000, and begin bringing them home in July 2011, there was no change in the public’s resistance to escalation. Just 42 percent favor sending more troops while 56 percent oppose it, essentially unchanged from November.

The findings suggest limits to Obama’s persuasive skills — and underscore what’s seemingly become the public’s default position in his first year in office: People like him, but they’re squeamish about his policy. …

Nonetheless, half the country still says the nation is on the wrong track, and 42 percent don’t approve of how Obama is governing. Those results could prove problematic for a White House looking to advance an ambitious agenda next year and to Democrats seeking to retain control of the House and Senate. Congress’ marks remain low, with only one-third of the country approving of how it’s doing and two-thirds disapproving.

Although the national debate over health care has been heated, there was little to no change from November in the public’s attitudes on the proposals being discussed — 44 percent oppose them while 36 percent support them. And only half the country approves of Obama’s handling of the issue.

Usually, the first place one would look for a skew in an outlier survey is the sample.  The AP, like many news organizations, routinely oversample Democrats and boost Obama’s numbers as a result.  In this case, thought, the remarkable story of the sample is the correction made to this consistent bias. Their previous two surveys had the split in party ID at a ridiculous double-digit level.  In this survey, the sample consisted of 37% Democrats and 32% Republicans — perhaps a point or two too wide, but certainly within reason.

Despite this correction, there wasn’t much movement on the issues, and what there was generally went in Obama’s favor.  He remained at a virtual split on the economy, with the numbers in the margin of error but flipping favorably from 46/49 to 48/46.  Health care stayed dead even at 49/46, although support for his health care package continued to drop into the fringe range, going from 39/45 in November to 36/44 this month.  His rating on the deficit went from 40/51 to 41/48, again more of a statistical hiccup than a movement.

The biggest change came on his approval ratings on Afghanistan, which seems strange, because the survey indicates more resistance than ever to increasing troops in the Af-Pak theater.  He went from 42/48 to 52/40, an 18-point swing in approval.  That appears to be a leadership effect, bolstered by finally making a decision after months of public dithering.  But the opposition to the war in Af-Pak remains at 39/57, and opposition to Obama’s surge increased from 46/50 in October and 43/54 in November to 42/56 this month.

All of these go against trends in other polls, and are somewhat contradictory within this poll.  It looks like a classic outlier, not a case of biased sampling, although polling adults rather than registered or likely voters makes any poll much less predictive.