Pew: Obama Falls to 41% Approval, 53% Disapproving; 65% Disapprove of His Handling of Economy, 59% Disapprove of His Handling of Obamacare

I'm sure many of you are thinking what I'm thinking: How the hell can his ratings remain so high? What exactly does it take?

Nevertheless, 41% approval basically represents the Democratic Base -- and not just Democrat-leaners, but diehard Democrats. So that's what he's down to.

Note how closely he tracks with Bush's falling 2nd term approval. The only difference in the two lines is that the Democratic base is about 8 points or so bigger than the Republican base:

Only about one-in-five independents (21%) give Obama positive marks on the economy, while 75% disapprove. About a third of Democrats (34%) disapprove of the way Obama is handling the economy (64% approve).

Obama also gets negative ratings on health care policy (37% approve, 59% disapprove). In January, views of Obama’s handling of health care policy were mixed (45% approved, 47% disapproved).

In addition, his approval with Independents is down 32% (61% disapprove). Bush, who continued to lose support after his 2004 reelection, had 29% support from Independents in November 2009. Obama is pretty much right there.

One thing Gabe keeps noting on the podcast is the only thing that keeps Obama -- or Democrats -- afloat is the "Cares about people like me" question ("shares my values," etc. -- it's put a lot of different ways, but the question gets at the idea of simply considering a politician or party as part of one's own tribe). This question isn't noted by Pew. I'd be curious to see the numbers on that one -- again, as Gabe keeps pointing out, Republicans frequently beat the Democrats on most issue areas, but then lose on that one question, and then lose the election.

Corrected: The headline had claimed that 61% disapproved of Obama on health care; in fact, it's 59%.

posted by Ace at 04:05 PM

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