The latest Gallup Poll seems to indicate that President Obama continues to enjoy an approval rating better than either of his two predecessors:
PRINCETON, NJ — President Barack Obama’s job approval rating, at 61% in the latest three-day average of Gallup Poll Daily tracking, is slightly above where George W. Bush’s and in particular Bill Clinton’s were at this point in mid-March of the first years of their administrations
Gallup’s mid-March job approval rating for Bush, measured March 9-11, 2001, was 58%, with 29% disapproval. Gallup’s March 12-14, 1993, approval rating for Clinton was 53%, with 34% disapproval. Both of these approval ratings are lower than Obama’s current 61%. Bush’s disapproval rating in mid-March 2001 was about the same as Obama’s is now (28%), while Clinton’s disapproval rating was significantly higher.
These comparisons suggest that President Obama is holding his own compared to the two presidents who came before him, despite some decline in his approval rating since his inauguration on Jan. 20.
Obama’s first Gallup job approval rating, based on a three-day rolling average of interviewing conducted Jan. 21-23, was 68%, with 12% disapproval and 21% with no opinion. As the percentage of Americans with no opinion of his presidency has decreased over the last seven weeks, his approval has been trending down, and his disapproval moving up.
However, it seems fairly clear that this change has been due largely to a hardening of opposition among Republicans:
What this chart shows is that, while Obama’s approval rating among Republicans has dropped about 15 percentage points, it has remained relatively stable among Independents and, of course, Democrats. The decline among Republicans is completely understandable, and it’s unlikely that a significant portion of them were Obama voters to begin with. The fact that we haven’t seen a similar drop among Independents indicates that Republican talking points aren’t resonating very much among them at this point. As long as that’s the case, Obama is likely to continue to have broad public support.
