Based on the responses of one thousand five hundred likely voters to a survey conducted over the telephone, thirty percent of respondents said they strongly approved of the way President Barack Obama was handling his job while forty-one percent expressed strong disapproval of his performance. Overall, the numbers are only slightly better for the president. The Rasmussen polling data indicates that a scant forty-six percent approve somewhat of the president’s performance, down nineteen points since he took office this past January and the lowest rating yet for the publishing firm.
Breaking the polling data down based on political party affiliation, the numbers are not too unexpected, but at the same time not all that encouraging for the White House. Eight-one percent of Democrats polled expressed approval of Obama’s handling of the presidential office while eight-three percent of Republican respondents disapproved. What’s truly troubling for the White House, however, is the data showing that sixty-six percent of independents, the precise sector of the American political spectrum that helped give the president’s campaign that extra push to win the 2008 election, said they disapproved of his performance thus far.
These numbers are tremendously significant in terms of where the president’s health care reform legislation stands in that whatever direction the president’s approval rating goes, so goes success or failure of any bill he is trying to pass. And, judging by these numbers, Obamacare may be on its last leg.
Matters aren’t any better for the Democratic leadership in both houses of Congress. Asked to respond to whether they would, given the chance to vote today, keep or replace any number of legislators in Congress, fifty-seven percent said they would removed all of them and start over again. Only twenty-five percent expressed enough confidence in Congress to keep things the way they are.
So what happened to all the heaps of public good will the Obama administration rode in on? As Charlie Cook of Cook’s Political Report put it – it’s the economy, stupid. Only twenty-nine percent of respondents in the Rasmussen poll expressed confidence that Congress knows what it is doing in terms of handling the nation’s economy. This figure includes the measly seven percent who are very confident in Congress’s approach and the thirty-eight percent who are not at all convinced.
Barring an event that would suddenly and dramatically raise Obama’s floundering approval rating – a ‘rally ‘round the flag’ type event such as the Bay of Pigs or September 11th – there is nothing to suggest that either the president’s poll numbers or support for his health care bill will change course any time soon.
