Six reasons why Obama's popularity is remarkable
- Not affected by Blago: Despite the extensive focus on Rod Blagojevich, and repeated attempts by Republicans to tie Obama to Blago's corruption, Obama has been unaffected in the public's view. The only poll with daily trendlines, Rasmussen, shows Obama's approval at 66%-32%. This is a statistically insignificant change from recent days, as Obama's approval rating has been between 64% and 68% the entire month of December.
- Vastly outpolling Democrats: The new NBC / WSJ poll shows Obama's favorable rating at favorable 67%--16% unfavorable, compared to favorable 49%--28% unfavorable for the Democratic Party. So, 18% of the country has a favorable opinion of Obama, but does not have a favorable image of the Democratic Party, of which Obama is a member. This is in contrast to the course of the presidential campaign, during which Obama regularly underperformed the Democratic Party.
- Approved by some Bush dead-enders: For all non-Rasmussen polls conducted in December, Polling Report shows that disapproval of Obama's cabinet picks and handling of the transition is only between 10% and 22%, depending on the poll and the question being asked. This means that even a significant number of the people who still approve of Bush's performance as President do not, as of yet, disapprove of Obama's performance. In fact, in the polls where Obama's numbers climb to the mid- or high-seventies, there are clearly some people who approve of both Bush and Obama.
- Approved of despite low popularity for bailouts: The latest Pew poll (PDF, pages 3-5) shows tepid to low support for bailouts. 49% of the country approves of governmental support for homeowners facing foreclosure, 47% approves of bailouts for the financial industry, and 39% approve of bailouts for auto manufacturers. Obama supports all of these proposals, and yet is able to maintain high popularity anyway. The infrastructure and energy stimulus proposal is very popular, with 70% support, but it is still worth noting that Obama is much more popular than many of his key legislative priorities.
- Obama outpolling past presidential honeymoons: The latest NBC poll offers a comparison of Obama to past Presidential transitions, and it is quite positive:
Obama is enjoying a bigger honeymoon than his recent predecessors ever did. Just consider these numbers in the latest NBC/WSJ poll: 67% say they're pleased with Obama's early appointments, 75% believe that the level of his involvement in making policy has been exactly right, and his fav/unfav rating is 67%-16%. By comparison, a month after their initial presidential victories, Bush's rating was 48%-35% and Clinton's was 60%-19%
- Direction of the country still very pessimistic: Despite some recent improvement, only about 20-25% of the population thinks the country is on the right track, according to December polling.
So, President-elect Obama is outpolling Democrats, previous presidential honeymoons, the direction of the country and many of his own legislative priorities. Clearly, right now people approve of Obama himself, in a very context-less way. Further, he is not affected by Blagojevich, and some of his support even comes from people who also approve of Bush.
It is not clear how long this will last, or even what affect it will have on current and upcoming legislative fights. In the same way that Obama is supported despite tepid support for bailouts, Obama's high personal popularity has not resulted in higher support for his legislative priorities. Then again, Obama hasn't exactly been leading any legislative fights just yet, and it is possible that when he does, that will change. If Obama were to start touring the country, pushing for support for one of his programs or other, it might result in increased support for those programs. At the same time, it might also result in lowered approval of Obama, as he begins to tie himself to less-than-popular initiatives, such as the auto bailout.
When Obama's presidency begins for real in about 40 days, both will probably end up being the case. As such, it is probably best for the new Democratic trifecta to try and push a lot of legislation very quickly, since Obama's approval ratings will probably never be this high again. We need to get a lot done during this window of remarkable popularity. |
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