Eeesh: Gallup Has Obama at 50% Approval For First Time Since Spring

A consequence of winning: the public continued to give Obama good personally-like marks even as they opposed his policies. Now that he seems neutered, boxed in, checked -- no longer such a threat to disrupt their lives and the American way of doing things -- his approval seems to be rising.

It is not yet clear if Obama's approval rating will stay above 50% in the coming days; his approval rating in each of the individual days comprising the latest three-day average has remained near the 50% mark. The current 50% average over the last three days could reflect a temporary increase in optimism that Gallup sometimes sees at the beginning of a new year. The latest numbers also come at a time when the president was on vacation in Hawaii and out of the political spotlight, following a highly publicized pre-Christmas session with Congress that resulted in the passage of several major pieces of legislation.

Obama's current approval rating is 80% among Democrats, 47% among independents, and 16% among Republicans in the three most recent days of polling. The figures for independents and Republicans are slightly higher than what Gallup has measured for Obama in recent weeks.

That's not a super-good thing for Obama, that the public's saying We like Obama's leadership when he is not in fact leading as he wishes but bowing to the leadership of others. That wouldn't make a good campaign theme-- Vote for me, I Promise That I Have Learned to No Longer Trust My Own Judgment.

Obama's big advantage going forward is people's general preference for the status quo and general aversion to change. Because Obama created new facts on the ground, he created a new status quo, and Republicans will have their work cut out for them as they attempt to change that.

That was always their plan -- ignore popular wishes, impose a new status quo on them against their will, and then count on people's apathy and resistance to change to now start counting in favor of the status quo they were originally against.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't do these things; we have to, we promised. It's just going to be difficult, and we'll have to always cast our position as return to the true status quo, and not permit Obama and his Democratic spokesmen in the paid media to cast our moves as undoing set policy. Obama's policies aren't set and undoing them is not a change but a restoration of original conditions, all for the good.

In poling news from Rasmussen, the number of voters calling the economy a "very important" issue hit its highest level since the panic of 2008.

The new finding is up five points from 82% in late October and has consistently been the issue voters place the highest level of importance on since regular tracking began several years ago.

Rasmussen also finds the GOP at its highest level of public identification since 2004.

The number of American adults calling themselves Republicans in December increased by one percentage point from November to 37.0%.

Also in December, the number calling themselves Democrats fell by a point to 33.7%.

Those figures reflect the largest number of Republicans in the nation since December 2004 and the lowest number of Democrats ever recorded in tracking since November 2002.

It’s the second straight month that Rasmussen Reports polling has found more people identifying as Republicans than Democrats. Prior to November, that had never happened before.

Even if Rasmussen has a small 2-3% Republican skew, it's the change that's important. That is, even if you assume Rassumssen polls too many Republicans and too few liberals, their own findings would still show a shift to the Republican side of things.

posted by Ace at 02:10 PM

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