Oh, there’s President Obama’s job-approval rating, down there.

Hmm.

Bit of a rough patch, Mr. President?

Buyer’s remorse kicking in?

Pollster Scott Rasmussen just dropped some eye-opening survey results:

57% Fear Government Will Use NSA Data to Harass Political Opponents

There is little public support for the sweeping and unaccountable nature of the NSA surveillance program along with concerns about how the data will be used.

• Fifty-seven percent (57%) of voters nationwide believe it is likely the NSA data will be used by other government agencies to harass political opponents. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that just 30% consider it unlikely and 14% are not sure.
• 33% approve of the NSA program to fight terrorism while 50% are opposed.
• 26% now believe it is necessary to collect data on millions of ordinary Americans to fight terrorism. Sixty-four percent (64%) believe it would be better to narrow the program so that it monitors only those with ties to terrorists or suspected terrorists.
• Seventy-four percent (74%) believe the government should be required to show a judge the need for monitoring the calls of specific Americans.

What this tells us is that the American people have grown very cynical about their government. And it’s hard to blame them.

Another busy Jolt today . . . two sections to preview this morning:

BOOM: Quinnipiac Sees Obama’s Approval Take a Sudden Tumble

For a couple of weeks, Obama fans have been high-fiving each other, looking at polling numbers and concluding the public didn’t really blame the president for any of the scandals engulfing his administration.

Well, looks like they celebrated too early:

American voters say 76 – 17 percent, including 63 – 30 percent among Democrats, that a special prosecutor should be appointed to investigate charges the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative groups, according to a Quinnipiac University national poll released today.

President Barack Obama gets a negative 45 – 49 percent job approval rating, compared to 48 – 45 percent positive in a May 1 survey by the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University, conducted before the IRS allegations surfaced.

The president’s biggest drop is among independent voters, who give him a negative 37 – 57 percent score, compared to a negative 42 – 48 percent May 1. He gets a negative 9 – 86 percent from Republicans and a positive 87 – 8 percent from Democrats, both virtually unchanged. Women approve 49 – 45 percent while men give a negative 40 – 54 percent score.

Americans are divided 49 – 47 percent on whether Obama is honest and trustworthy, down from 58 – 37 percent, the last time Quinnipiac University asked the question September 1, 2011.

Gee, what could cause that drop? Moving along . . . 

News-Junkie Hipster-ism and ‘The Real Scandal’

If you’ll allow me to quote Matt Welch twice, he articulates an irritation buzzing around the back of my head, pundits’ all-too-frequent declaration that whatever scandal is in the headlines is an obviously frivolous and inconsequential distraction, and that they’ve figured out what we really ought to be talking about if we’re serious, thoughtful people. You know . . . “the real scandal,” as they incessantly declare.

But the real party comes when you search on “the real scandal.” So much to choose from!

There’s “child poverty” (Jesse Jackson, Chicago Sun-Times), “political gridlock” (Ned Barnett, Charlotte News & Observer), “the Republican party’s devotion to grandstanding over governance and its preference for slime over substance” (Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., The Huffington Post), “secret money influencing US elections” (Ari Berman, The Nation), “that 501(c)(4) groups have been engaged in political activity in such a sustained and open way” (Jeffrey Toobin, New Yorker), that “they let General Electric not pay any taxes” (Michael Moore, HuffPost Live), sex abuse in the military (Katrina vanden Heuvel, Washington Post), and even “the IRS itself” (John Tamny, Forbes).

This is like news junkie hipster-ism. “Oh, you’re following that news story? Pshaw. I was following that story years ago. The really important story now is [some obscure story they’re fairly certain you haven’t read about yet].”

Now, some of those items are real problems, i.e., child poverty and sex abuse in the military. But only a fool would argue that the existence of one problem automatically de-prioritizes any other problem. Maybe there are a lot of big problems in our government and society that the American people should be concerned about and try to solve or improve. Maybe we really have a lot of scandals going on.

The real scandal is that we have so many real scandals going on.

The Thursday edition of the Morning Jolt looks at what it will take for the media to stop giving President Obama the benefit of the doubt on the recent scandals, more egregious behavior at the IRS, and then these thoughts on recent polling:

A Delayed Reaction to Obama Scandals? Or No Reaction at All?

Will the scandals hurt President Obama’s approval rating? National Journal’s Michael Catalini looks at polling history and suggests we may see a delayed reaction within a few months:

A CNN/ORC poll showed that 53 percent of Americans approve of the job he’s doing. That is about where he stood in April, when the same poll found he had a 51 percent approval rating. A Gallup poll showed 49 percent approved of the job he’s doing, and a Washington Post/ABC survey had his approval rating at 51 percent, nearly the same as his 50 percent rating in April . . . 

The break-in at the Watergate occurred in June 1972, five months before Nixon rode to a landslide reelection, but the scandal did not damage his approval ratings until after two aides were convicted of conspiracy in January 1973. Between January and August, his approval rating dropped from 67 percent to 31 percent after the resignation of his top staffers, attorney general and deputy attorney general . . . 

Ronald Reagan’s approval rating dipped from 63 percent in October of 1986 to 47 percent in December 1986, a month after Reagan organized the special commission to investigate whether arms were traded for hostages as part of the Iran-Contra affair.

I’d note that I’m not sure we can or should compare the media environments of 1974 or 1986 to today. At first glance, you would point out that we’re no longer in an era where the Big Three evening newscasts and the Associated Press wire service dominate the news coverage. Newsweekies had much bigger influence; Newsweek isn’t even around today.

So perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that it took two months for Watergate or Iran-Contra to be “digested” by the electorate.

Now there are millions of outlets, ranging from 24-7 cable news channels to talk radio to a million sites and blogs on the Internet. This means that news events and developments are brought to the public’s attention faster, but those events also get overridden and overshadowed by new developments and other news quickly. (The Boston bombings were five weeks ago; doesn’t it feel like it was a long time ago?)

The news cycle moves so quickly, The Flash has trouble keeping up. The argument under the Faster-Feiler theory is that the public is getting better at processing the information quickly. But perhaps that assessment is mistaken. Perhaps the decline of the 1970s and 1980s-era dominant media institutions, and the explosion of other media, haven’t resulted in a uniformly better-informed public. We now seem to be in an era of at least three tiers of news consumption.

News junkies — which probably includes you and me — are aware of what Mickey Kaus called “undernews” — stories that never quite break out of the blogs. John Edwards’ scandal was well-known to most in the political press, but a lot of mainstream media institutions averted their eyes for a long time from the evidence. (Working in the news-gathering profession does not necessarily expose one to undernews, as shown by the woman who didn’t understand why President Obama was joking about eating a dog in his 2012 White House Correspondent’s Dinner speech.)

Somewhere in the middle you’ve got the folks who follow the big headlines, but don’t search out alternative media to get this “undernews.” And then there’s the completely oblivious citizen, who follows no news at all, and ends up spectacularly uninformed, or ill-informed, about what’s going on in his country:

A new survey’s findings show many of the people who say they haven’t decided who to vote for in the race for president are either uninformed or uninterested.

A study by YouGov.com has found only 40 percent of undecided voters know that John Boehner is the Speaker of the House.

A whopping 31 percent don’t know who Vice President Joe Biden is.

In one focus group, one undecided voter said he thought President Obama made a mistake not visiting New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, when in fact President George Bush was president at the time.

Good to know that every once in a while, the dolts end up preferring our guy, huh?

So the “undernews” crowd may use these recent scandals in deciding what they think of the president, but the other two groups may not be connecting these stories to the president yet.

When pollsters ask the “how closely are you following [X story]?” question, I find myself thinking of Jimmy Kimmel’s recurring feature when he gets people on the street to answer questions about news events that never occurred. (Admittedly, he’s asking people on Hollywood Boulevard.) His staff found people with strong views about who won the First Lady Debate between Michelle Obama and Ann Romney, people who claimed to have witnessed an asteroid that didn’t reach earth yet, and people giving their opinion on Obama’s decision to appoint Judge Judy to the Supreme Court. (All of those people are presumably eligible to vote.)

This morning’s big polling news focuses on the public’s reaction to the recent scandals . . . 

Majorities of Americans believe that the Internal Revenue Service deliberately harassed conservative groups by targeting them for special scrutiny and say that the Obama administration is trying to cover up important details about the terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans last year.

But a new Washington Post-ABC News poll also finds that allegations of impropriety related to the controversies have yet to affect President Obama’s political standing.

But buried in the Post’s survey is a look at whether the American people feel the sequester is affecting them. They asked, “Have you personally felt any negative impact of these [Sequester] budget cuts, or not? Has it been a major effect or minor?”

The survey found 37 percent said they had felt its effects; 18 percent said major, and 19 percent said minor. The majority, 61 percent, said they felt no effects.

Two other numbers worth keeping an eye on: approval of how Hillary Clinton handled her Secretary of State duties is down from 68 percent in December to 62 percent today. The survey found 38 percent say the federal government is doing more to protect the rights of average Americans, while 54 percent think it’s doing more to threaten those rights.

As if the Obamacare polling result below isn’t jaw-dropping enough, now there’s this indicator of how ill-informed the public is: “Although 63 percent said that they had a favorable opinion of Planned Parenthood, including 38 percent of those who identified themselves as pro-life, 55 percent of those polled did not know that Planned Parenthood performs abortions.”

I suppose we should be thankful that the public can still differentiate between Kermit Gosnell and Kermit the Frog.

Do we need to hold a seminar on “Basic Facts in Public Debates”? Maybe have everyone carry some 3×5 index cards saying, “Planned Parenthood is the pro-abortion group”?

It is entirely possible that we have a public so spectacularly ill-informed, we are no longer capable of governing themselves. Here’s an April tracking poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation: “Four in ten Americans (42%) are unaware that the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is still the law of the land, including 12 percent who believe the law has been repealed by Congress, 7 percent who believe it has been overturned by the Supreme Court and 23 percent who say they don’t know enough to say what the status of the law is.”

With the public so vague on whether or not Obamacare is actually law, we should take all poll results with a grain of salt. But the law is even less popular than when it passed:

“Overall, the public remains as divided as ever when it comes to their overall evaluations of the health law. This month, 35 percent report a favorable view, 40 percent an unfavorable view, and a full 24 percent report they have  no opinion on the law, continuing a recent trend of particularly high shares not offering an opinion. Partisans remain quite divided, with a majority of Democrats in favor (57 percent) and most Republicans opposed (67 percent).”

In terms oft he law’s political future, just over half of Americans (53 percent) continue to say that they approve of efforts by opponentsto change orstop the law “so it has less impact on taxpayers, employers, and health care providers”, a view which theoretically encompasses a range of positions from hard‐core repeal supporters to those who believe the law only needs minor tweaks.One in three (including more than half of Democrats) believe that the law’s opponents should accept that it is the law of the land and stop trying to block its implementation, down somewhat from January (33 percent now compared to 40 percent at the start of the year).”

How do we know the media is downplaying the problems in implementing Obamacare? When 40 percent of Americans are unaware that the law is in place.

The Washington Post asks Americans how they feel about President George W. Bush today, and the results may surprise his critics:

Days before his second term ended in 2009, Bush’s approval rating among all adults was 33 percent positive and 66 percent negative. The new poll found 47 percent saying they approve and 50 percent saying they disapprove. Among registered voters, his approval rating today is equal to President Obama’s, at 47 percent, according to the latest Post-ABC surveys.

Apparently Douglas Adams was off by a bit; the answer isn’t “42,” it’s “47 percent.”

The Tuesday edition of the Morning Jolt features a look at some utterly inappropriate responses to the Boston bombing, some polling news that probably depressed the folks at the Huffington Post, a graphic for those who don’t want the immigration bill rushed, and then this intriguing new poll result:

Organizing for Action’s Big Talk on Another Gun-Control Vote

After the defeat of the Toomey-Manchin compromise, you’re hearing a lot of gun-control advocates left in a combination of sputtering disbelief and rage. Midday Monday, Organizing for Action — formerly Obama for America — sent out a message that mentioned the “90 percent of Americans support this” statistic twice, concluding, “90 percent of this country is on our side, not theirs. If we all step up, we will be heard. And we will win the next vote.”

So they think there’s going to be another gun vote sometime soon. Say, as we get closer to Election Day 2014, does this vote get easier or harder for red-state Democrats? Do Kay Hagan in North Carolina and Mary Landrieu in Louisiana stay on board? Or do they feel even greater pressure to put daylight between themselves and, say, Mike Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns?

Of course, if you want to pass something like Toomey-Manchin, you have to persuade Democratic senators Max Baucus of Montana, Mark Begich of Alaska, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, and Mark Pryor of Arkansas to switch sides and support the proposal. And in the end, the oft-cited “90 percent” figure clearly doesn’t matter that much to them. A more interesting question is, how do Montanans, Alaskans, North Dakotans, and Arkansans feel? Judging by the votes of those four, the provisions of the Toomey-Manchin proposal weren’t such a slam dunk.

Now USA Today offers a number that demonstrates the wording of the question matters a great deal:

Four months after the shooting rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School, a USA TODAY Poll finds support for a new gun-control law ebbing as prospects for passage on Capitol Hill seem to fade.

Americans are more narrowly divided on the issue than in recent months, and backing for a bill has slipped below 50%, the poll finds. By 49%-45%, those surveyed favor Congress passing a new gun-control law. In an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll in early April, 55% had backed a stricter gun law, which was down from 61% in February.

The survey of 1,002 adults was taken Thursday through Sunday by Princeton Survey Research. The margin of error is +/- 4 percentage points.

Clip and save the big talk from Organizing for Action, by the way. Because after the 2014 Senate primaries are done, when the Democrats’ hopes of retaining the Senate hang on Baucus, Begich and Pryor . . . let’s see how important this vote really is to them. Let’s see if Organizing for Action really is willing to leave these senators alone because of this issue, when they’re neck-and-neck with Republican challengers.

Maybe they’ll prove me wrong. But I’ll bet that as we approach November 2014, Organizing for Action will be sending out a very different message — about how Baucus, Begich and Pryor must be reelected for the sake of the president’s agenda in the next two years.

Obamacare is akin to a national case of hyperopia: the closer it gets, the fuzzier and less clear it becomes.

No, really; as the implementation of the law approaches, Americans understand less about it than they did three years ago:

Sixty-seven percent of the uninsured younger than age 65 — and 57 percent of the overall population — say they do not understand how the ACA will impact them, according to a poll released Wednesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation…

 

Seventy-eight percent say they haven’t heard enough to say whether their state plans to expand Medicaid, a decision the Supreme Court made optional in its landmark ACA decision last year. “This is equally true in states where the governor has states they will expand Medicaid and in those whose governor has said they will not move forward with the expansion,” the pollsters note.

In fact, the public seems actually to be even less knowledgeable about the health law’s more popular provisions than they were three years ago, including tax credits to small business to buy insurance, subsidy assistance for individuals and guaranteed issue of health insurance.

Many also continue to hold false impressions of the law: 57 percent incorrectly believe that the ACA includes a public option. Nearly half believe the law provides financial assistance for illegal immigrants to buy insurance. And 40 percent — including 35 percent of seniors — still believe that the government will have “death panels” make decisions about end-of-life care for Medicare beneficiaries.

The poll analysis asserts “death panels” don’t exist, but that’s only because the Independent Payment Advisory Board tries to ignore that nickname.

From the American Medical Association’s summary:

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act established a 15‐member Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) to extend Medicare solvency and reduce spending growth through use of a spending target system and fast track legislative approval process. By April 30 of each year, beginning in 2013, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Actuary’s Office will project whether Medicare’s per‐capita spending growth rate in the following two years will exceed a targeted rate . . .

If future Medicare spending is expected to exceed the targets,the IPAB will propose recommendations to Congress and the President to reduce the growth rate. The IPAB’s first set of recommendations would be proposed on January 15, 2014.

The only way to cut the costs is to declare certain treatments insufficiently cost-efficient to be covered by Medicare. Citing “serious concerns,” the American Medical Association opposes the IPAB and supports its repeal.

A new poll by Fairleigh Dickinson University finds New Jersey governor Chris Christie clinging to his narrow lead over his Democratic challenger, state senator Barbara Buono, 58 percent to 22 percent.

Among self-described Democrats, Buono leads . . . 40 percent to 36 percent.

Christie is winning among women, 54 percent to 24 percent.

The pollsters summarize:

Although a blue state, a solid majority of Democrats (55%) and independents (61%) approve of the job Christie is doing and even more Republicans (83%) give the governor high marks. Other groups who are not considered likely suspects among his supporters include women (62%), those from union households (52%), and non-whites (56%).

A majority of voters are also pleased with the direction the state is headed. Fifty-seven percent say it’s headed in the right direction and, with the exception of the usual partisan differences, perceptions are largely positive across relevant demographic categories.

With numbers like these, the big question is, just how much money does the Democratic Governors Association want to spend in New Jersey this year? Or more specifically, how much do they have to spend to avoid the appearance that they’re giving up on this race, even though they’re sooner or later going to have to admit that with numbers like these, Buono amounts to a sacrificial lamb?

“BOOM,” says the latest McClatchy-Marist poll:

If President Barack Obama had piled up political capital with his impressive re-election, it’s largely gone.

His approval rating has dropped to the lowest level in more than a year, with more voters now turning thumbs down on his performance than thumbs up, according to a new McClatchy-Marist poll. The measure of how much people like him also has dropped.

He’s still vastly more popular than Congress, particularly congressional Republicans. But in the biggest political clash of the year — over the federal budget and how to curb deficits — voters split 44 percent to 42 percent between preferring Congress or Obama.

The numbers: 45 percent of voters approve of the way he’s handling his job, 48 percent disapprove. Steven Thomma of McClatchy puts those numbers in context:

That was down from a 50 percent approval rating in November and December, and the lowest since November 2011. It also was the first time that more people disapproved of his work than approved since November 2011, when his rating was 43-50. Obama’s personal popularity also has declined, with 48 percent of voters having favorable impressions of him and 48 percent having unfavorable impressions. That was down from 53-44 in December. It also was the lowest since November 2011, when it was 47-49.

“Man, that guy is falling fast!” said Icarus.

The article also notes:

At least some of the president’s fall to Earth lies in the fact that voters no longer see him in the context of an election. He has to stand alone in the eyes of voters again and doesn’t benefit from the comparison with Republican rival Mitt Romney.

In light of that, we should expect the White House to seek out a new stand-in for Romney, some Republican who they can demonize and use as a contrast. Speaker John Boehner and House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan seem like the most likely targets.

Bummer.

Quinnipiac thinks the biggest news out of their national poll is that Hillary Clinton would beat Chris Christie in a hypothetical 2016 matchup, but the numbers examining voters’ mood about the here and now are revealing in their negativity:

The Democratic edge is seen in the poll finding that voters disapprove of the job Democrats in Congress are doing 60 – 32 percent, compared to an overwhelming 71 – 20 percent disapproval for Republicans in Congress.

Can the Democrats take back the House in 2014 as “the slightly less detested party”?

President Barack Obama has a 45 – 46 percent job approval, virtually unchanged from last month’s 46 – 45 percent score, but down from his post-election high of 53 – 40 percent in December. The gender gap continues to mark the president’s ratings, with women approving 48 – 42 percent, while men disapprove 51 – 41 percent.

The good news for Obama is that voters trust him slightly more on several issues than they do congressional Republicans. They give him the advantage 44 – 40 percent on handling the economy, 46 – 41 percent on handling health care and 45 – 40 percent on handling immigration. Republicans have the trust of 44 percent of voters on gun policy, compared to 42 percent for the president, and 43 percent for handling the budget deficit, compared to 41 percent for Obama.

Those are not great numbers for anybody.

BOOM:

A Reuters/Ipsos online poll released on Wednesday showed 43 percent of people approve of Obama’s handling of his job, down 7 percentage points from February 19.

Most of that steep drop came in the week to February 26 when it was becoming clear that Washington was going to be unable to put aside partisan differences and agree to halt automatic budget cuts which started last Friday.

DOUBLE BOOM:

Thirty-eight percent of Americans believe all the political actors involved — Republican and Democratic members of Congress along with Obama — deserve most of the blame for the cuts.

Twenty-seven percent think Republicans in Congress are responsible, 17 percent blamed Obama and 6 percent thought Democrats were to blame. Nearly half of independent voters, 49 percent, said both sides deserve the blame.

Every president generates a bit of “buyer’s remorse” from the electorate in his second term. Perhaps Obama’s is hitting early . . .

I don’t know if President Obama is losing the messaging battle over the sequester, but so far, he isn’t winning.

A new survey of adults from CBS News this morning: “38 percent of Americans place more blame on the Republicans in Congress, while 33 percent blame President Obama and the Democrats in Congress more for the difficulty in reaching agreement on spending cuts by the deadline.” Among independents, 33 percent blame Republicans, 31 percent blame Obama.

They find that “53 percent say they personally will be affected by the cuts in the sequester,” and run the headline, “Most feel sequester will personally affect them,” but that’s still 39 percent who said they didn’t think it would affect them, and another 7 percent who aren’t sure.

You’re seeing more writers express a conventional wisdom that the president has botched this:

Josh Kraushaar:

The headlines from the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, released Wednesday, seemed like good news for the president, but there are plenty of warning signs embedded within the survey. President’s Obama’s job-approval rating dropped 3 points overall since last December, to 50 percent, and his economic job approval is a mediocre 44 percent, down 5 points in the past two months. Despite the GOP’s deep unpopularity, Democrats hold only a statistically insignificant 2-point edge, 32 percent to 30 percent, over which party was best able to handle the economy. Republicans hold a 16-point edge on which party is best-equipped to control spending, even higher than their pre-2010 midterm standing.

Most notably, on the sequester, the White House held only a narrow advantage when respondents were presented the arguments for and against it. A bare 50 percent majority agreed with the president’s argument that the cuts “are too severe,” while 46 percent argued it is “time for dramatic measures.” Asked what Congress should do, 53 percent supported either keeping the cuts or implementing more significant spending cuts, with 37 percent backing a plan with fewer cuts. It’s hardly the sign of a presidential mandate on the subject, and a reminder that there is widespread concern over spending and the federal debt.

The White House’s strategy to exaggerate the immediate impact of the cuts has backfired, at least to some degree. The Washington Post reported that Education Secretary Arne Duncan falsely claimed that public school teachers were already receiving pink slips. The Pew Research Center this week found that only 30 percent of voters thought the spending cuts would have an impact on their personal finances — much lower than the 43 percent who believed the fiscal cliff posed a danger on that front.

Over at CQ Roll Call:

Republican aides said the GOP has maneuvered the president into a corner. Aides believe the sequester will affect Democratic constituencies more deeply than Republicans’, and by adding defense-related bills into the continuing resolution, they feel they can pacify their own hawks longer than Congressional Democrats can keep in line their members who cherish social programs.

“It’s going to be more comfortable for us than it is for them,” a House GOP leadership aide predicted.

Indeed, another senior Senate Democratic aide acknowledged that it will be hard for Democrats to keep holding the line against GOP efforts to give the president flexibility on how to implement the sequester.

Republicans also believe that they are bearing dividends of the “Williamsburg Accord,” in which Republicans agreed to push off the debt ceiling, and noted they will move a CR well in advance of a shutdown.

“Without a catastrophic news-friendly deadline . . . pressure builds slowly rather than a sudden cataclysmic event, which makes the president’s bully pulpit less effective,” the House aide said.

All this has Republican leaders thinking it is just a matter of time before Democrats come to them, hat in hand, acceding to a sequester deal without tax increases.

I like the simplicity of John Podhoretz’s theory: President Obama is getting more blame than he expected for the sequester . . . because he is there.

Maybe it’s as simple as this: The GOP is at a low point in its popularity historically, and Congress (whose lower House the GOP controls) is even more unpopular. Republicans are already being blamed for everything. So if something requires new blame, that blame has nowhere to go but in Obama’s direction.

The headlines about this morning’s Pew Research survey are likely to focus on how President Obama has a much higher approval rating than Congressional Republican leaders — 51 percent to 25 percent. But there’s a bit more to find in the numbers, results that challenge the Beltway narrative of a masterful president with a huge advantage over his hapless congressional opposition.

First of all, what is the public’s top priority, by a wide margin? Deficit reduction. Well ahead of immigration, gun control, and climate change:

What’s more, the vast majority of Americans want the deficit to be brought down by spending cuts or mostly spending cuts (73 percent) rather than tax increases or mostly tax increases (19 percent). Folks, that is a consensus that reaches across the partisan divide.

While respondents say they trust the president more than congressional Republicans on a host of issues . . .

. . . they don’t actually approve of how Obama is handling most issues.

With Obama at a 51 percent job approval but in the low to mid 40s in his handling of most issues, discussion of the president should note that a certain segment of the population likes him, personally, a lot more than his policies.

Chalk it up to his appearances in non-political programming like The View, The Tonight Show, and ESPN, or chalk it up to the happy images of him spending time with Michelle and his daughters. Obama is a lot more effective at getting people to like him than at persuading them.

ABC News has a new poll on the fiscal cliff deal:

Americans give a lukewarm response to last week’s agreement to avoid the fiscal cliff, albeit with higher marks for the deal to President Obama than to House Speaker John Boehner.

More people in this ABC News/Washington Post poll approve than disapprove of the agreement, but just by a 7-point margin, 45 to 38 percent, with a substantial 17 percent undecided. Moreover, intensity is on the negative side: “Strong” critics of the deal outnumber its strong proponents by 2-1.

Because the cliff passed without any significant economic disruption — no spending cuts to any popular programs, and most Americans not seeing their income taxes go up (even though their payroll taxes went up — one would expect most of the public to shrug their shoulders.

This morning’s Washington Post/ABC News poll is chock full of the usual bad news for Republicans – they’re perceived as stubborn and uncompromising, they’ll get the blame if the country goes over the fiscal cliff, the public thinks the deficit can be dealt with without any spending cuts, and so on — but with this interesting caveat: “Nonetheless, barely more than a third of all Americans see Obama as having a broad-based mandate coming out of the November election. Among political independents, which as a group narrowly sided with Republican Mitt Romney over Obama in November, twice as many say the president should compromise with the GOP than say he has a general mandate.”

Looking over Middle Cheese’s report and other data, I feel pretty confident about Mitt Romney’s chances in Florida, Virginia, North Carolina (not really on most people’s list of swing states anymore), and Colorado. That puts him at 257 electoral votes.

In New Hampshire (4 electoral votes), that WMUR poll looks pretty strange, in that they have Romney leading independents, 50–36, but losing overall, 51 percent to 48 percent. The sample splits 44 percent Democrat, 37.9 percent Republican, 16.9 percent independent. Democrats made up 29 percent of the electorate on Election Day 2008. Still, the only pollsters who have Romney ahead in New Hampshire are Rasmussen and ARG, so that one can’t be automatically tossed into the Romney pile. The Granite State is probably going to be very close.

At this point, it wouldn’t surprise me to see Romney win any of the “Mustache Firewall” states of Pennsylvania (20 electoral votes), Michigan (16), or Minnesota (10), but for now the most likely scenario is that Romney overperforms the traditional Republican level in these states and gets about a percentage point higher than the best Bush total, finishing with something like 48.6 percent in Minnesota (Bush 2004 + 1) 49.4 in Pennsylvania (Bush 2004 + 1), and 48.9 percent in Michigan (Bush 2000 + 1). In other words, Axelrod’s facial hair hangs on by a . . . well, hair. For what it’s worth, there are 21,000 still without power in the Philadelphia area. Not likely to be a huge factor, but . . .

Ohio (18 electoral votes) will be very close. The problem for Romney is that even if you toss out the polls that have unrealistic samples — i.e., the percentage of the electorate self-identifying as Democratic significantly ahead of 2008’s 39 percent — you still have only one poll in recent weeks that has ever had Romney ahead — Rasmussen, and Rasmussen’s most recent poll puts it at a 49–49 tie. Today’s “Ohio Poll” from the University of Cincinnati says it’s “too close to call,” putting it at 50 percent to 48.5 percent in favor of Obama. There is a chance that the GOP turnout is as huge as the big crowds suggest, and the Romney campaign’s confidence about coal country is probably well founded. The Columbus Dispatch poll also indicated that Romney enjoyed a “4-point edge in northwestern Ohio, which in past elections has proved a reliable barometer for the whole state.”

The Romney campaign boasts that “in Ohio, Republicans have 368,000 more high-propensity voters available than Democrats — 72 percent more, in fact — and enough to off-set the Obama campaign’s most optimistic (and unrealistic) early vote math.”

So a narrow Romney win is possible — the problem is that a solid Romney win is hard to envision, and as John Fund points out, it may take weeks to sort out the “provisional ballots” cast on Election Day. A 2000-style “overtime” seems increasingly plausible.

In Nevada (6 electoral votes), I think turnout among Mormons will help Romney overcome some of the conventional wisdom about the state being deep blue, but two factors have me keeping this state in the Obama pile: the fact that Obama is hitting 50 percent in this state regularly (while not being able to do so in other key states and nationally), and Jon Ralston’s gut. In most years and most states, if you can knock eight or nine points off an incumbent president’s lead, that’s enough to win, but not here.

Late last week, we looked at why the Romney campaign feels confident about Iowa (6 electoral votes). There were two key X factors in that equation — the Romney campaign’s assertion that they have about 87,000 more “high propensity voters” ready to vote on Election Day, and the Marist poll’s finding that Romney leads by nine percentage points among independents who plan to vote on Election Day. If those are true, Romney wins. If those aren’t, he probably falls short.

Wisconsin (10 electoral votes) will be the intriguing one. Rasmussen has it a tie, the crowd for the rally with Bruce Springsteen was 18,000 this morning (about 80,000 came out for a Kerry rally with Springsteen in 2004), Ryan’s presence should help some, we know the GOP turnout operations are a well-oiled machine since the Scott Walker recall election, and we know RNC chair Reince Priebus spared no effort or resource to move his home state. I’ll put this one in the Romney-Ryan pile, but just by a hair.

With Wisconsin, Romney’s at 267 votes, and needs just one of the following too-close-to-call states: Iowa, Ohio, or New Hampshire, or one of the Mustache Firewall states.

UPDATE: Note that there are two strange indicators pointing to a map where most or all of these swing states flip to Romney: the Gallup projection of the 2012 electorate (36 percent Republican, 35 percent Democratic, a 49–46 split in favor of the GOP with leaners, based on a sample of 9,424 likely voters) and Rasmussen’s projection of a 39.1 percent Republican, 33.3 percent Democratic electorate.

Since September 1, Marist, the pollster that conducts the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, has conducted 18 surveys in the swing states of Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin, Iowa, Colorado, and New Hampshire.

They’ve never shown Mitt Romney leading in any of those states. They had him tied in Colorado once.