If President Obama and his supporters thought today’s Washington Post poll was excessively gloomy about his reelection prospects, today’s Wall Street Journal poll doesn’t offer much sunshine, either. Once again, Obama’s approval rating has hit a new low within a survey’s history, at 44 percent, and his disapproval has hit a new high, 51 percent.
The lowest this survey ever found the “right track/wrong direction” responses was in October 2008, when 12 percent said the country was on the right track, and 78 percent said the country was headed in the wrong direction. Today, that figure is at 19 percent right, 73 percent wrong.
Only 40 percent say they will “probably” vote for Obama in 2012; 44 percent say they will “probably” vote for the Republican. Obama can reassure himself that he leads Perry 47 percent to 42 percent, and Mitt Romney 46 percent to 45 percent.
As I noted on Twitter, among union households, 49 percent disapprove of Obama; 45 percent approve.
Asked who they would prefer to control Congress, 47 percent say they would prefer a GOP-controlled Congress, 41 percent would prefer a Democrat-controlled one. Interestingly, only 42 percent say their representative deserves reelection; 47 percent say it’s time for someone new. The survey found 54 percent wished they could vote out every member of Congress.
The Journal finds Rick Perry leads the GOP field with 38 percent, Mitt Romney is at 23 percent, Ron Paul 9 percent, Michele Bachmann 8 percent, and Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain tied at 5 percent.
What gets my attention in this poll (simply another poll showing Obama at his lowest level yet is no longer news) was the finding that people prefer a Republican led congress to a Democratic led congress by a significant margin.
Often, when Obama's low poll numbers are cited, lefties will respond that his numbers are better than congress's numbers, therefore he is more popular than any of his Republican candidates. There are many ways to refute this spurious conclusion, but this finding is a new, and very deadly, arrow in the quiver of anyone who takes on such arguments.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHe's lost women big time. He's lost whites. He's lost independents even bigger time. He never had men. Latinos are cut to 50/50.
How in H E double hockey sticks do you come up with 44% approval?
Who did they survey for the overall approval number? Dead communists?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseTook me a while but I finally found the partisan weightings in this poll. Surprise, suprise, they overweighted Democrats. Is there EVER a poll that overweights Republicans? Best I've ever seen is a pretty even split.
Anyhoo, the weightings were 39-17-34 Dem-Indie-Repub. Or if you include the "leaners" among the Indies: 31-35-24 Dem-Indie-Repub.
And Obama is statistically tied with Romney on this sample? Yeeeeouch for Barry.
Again, no effort is made to include a likely voter screen. Gotta make Barry look as good as possible. My guess is that on a fair sample with a likely voter screen, Obama is losing to Romney by four to six points right now, and he's more or less tied with Perry.
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