Approval And Unemployment
David Axelrod whistles past the graveyard:
Despite what you hear in elite commentary, the President’s support among base voters and in key demographic groups has stayed strong. According to the latest NBC-WSJ poll, Democrats approve of his performance by an 81%-14% margin. That’s stronger than President Clinton’s support among Democrats at this point in his term and, according to Gallup, stronger than any Democratic President dating back to Harry Truman through this point in their presidency.
Well, there’s a couple of problems with that. One is that the 81% are not exactly enthusiastic in their approval:
Only 48% of Democrats on our most recent national survey said they were ‘very excited’ about voting in 2012. On the survey before that the figure was 49%. Those last two polls are the only times all year the ‘very excited’ number has dipped below 50%.
In 13 polls before August the average level of Democrats ‘very excited’ about voting next year had averaged 57%. It had been as high as 65% and only twice had the number even dipped below 55%.
The other is that since Election Day 2008, the breakdown of party affiliation has gone from 28/37/33 Republican/Independent/Democrat to 28/44/26. Which kinda suggests to me that Obama just managed to drive 7% of the electorate out of the Democratic Party entirely. If you add those people back in, then Obama’s approval rating is more like 64% among people who were Democrats when Obama was elected.
Granted, that’s probably an oversimplification, but the shrinkage in Democratic affiliation is almost certainly inflating Obama’s approval rating there, in much the same way that ignoring people who have given up looking for work understates the true scope of unemployment.
1 comment September 17th, 2011 at 04:25pm Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under: Democrats,Obama,Politics,Polls,Unemployment,Wankers
