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The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows that 22% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. That is the lowest level of strong approval yet recorded for this President. Forty-one percent (41%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -19. The Approval Index has been lower only on one day during Barack Obama’s thirteen months in office (see trends). The previous low came on December 22 as the Senate was preparing to approve its version of the proposed health care legislation. The current...

Over past 7 months, Mitt Romney’s favor among Republicans has fallen off a cliff. Monthly surveys by Public Policy Polling shows that Romney’s level of support has fallen to just 48% among Republican voters from a high of 67% in May of this year. Romney polled in the 60s on the first three polls but has not reached that threshold since and now for the first time he's below 50% with the party base. I don't have any theories to explain Romney's popularity slide with Republican voters but it certainly bodes ominous for his 2012 nomination prospects if he can't...

Started our Massachusetts poll tonight...looks like it might be a real race

McCain's New Radio Ads: Obama On A 'Crusade To Bankrupt America'...

Uptick owing largely to more independents calling themselves conservative by Lydia Saad PRINCETON, NJ -- The increased conservatism that Gallup first identified among Americans last June persisted throughout the year, so that the final year-end political ideology figures confirm Gallup's initial reporting: conservatives (40%) outnumbered both moderates (36%) and liberals (21%) across the nation in 2009. More broadly, the percentage of Americans calling themselves either conservative or liberal has increased over the last decade, while the percentage of moderates has declined. Since 1992, there have been only two other years -- 2003 and 2004 -- in which the average percentage...

A poll of GOP insiders suggests that ex-AK Gov. Sarah Palin (R) has little support among the party's professional class -- and maybe that's just how she wants it. In a survey of 109 party leaders, political professionals and pundits, Palin finished 5th on the list of candidates most likely to win the party's '12 WH nomination. Ex-MA Gov. Mitt Romney (R) was the overwhelming choice of the Voters were asked to rank 5 candidates in the order of likeliness to capture the GOP nod. The results: Likely To Win WH'12 Nomination (First place votes) Ex-MA Gov. Mitt Romney 81...

Four Republican opponents lead Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D) in potential general election matchups, according to a new Rasmussen survey. On top of trailing each Republican by at least 8 points and never reaching even 40% support, 55% say they hold an unfavorable opinion of the second-term senator.

Even Little-Known Democrats Seem Dangerously Underwater Fascinating: Asked, "if the election for your Member of Congress were held today, would you likely vote to re-elect Phil Hare?," only 39.5 percent of respondents in Illinois's 17th congressional district said "yes," and 47 percent said "no." This is a traditionally modestly Democratic district, where Obama carried 56 percent of the vote in 2008.

There's all sorts of speculation and back of the envelope math being done right now on the Massachusetts Senate special election and whether Republican Scott Brown might be able to pull off a surprise there. Dave Weigel reports that Rasmussen is going to be polling there tonight so that should give us a better idea but I thought it would be worth taking a look at what would happen if things played out in Masschusetts similarly to Virginia, which is a sort of Democratic worst case scenario. The Virginia exit poll showed the folks who turned out there voted for...

One underplayed aspect of this year's elections that I think could make an impact is the return of disaffected Republicans who didn't even bother coming out to vote in 2008 because they were unhappy about the nomination of John McCain. They may have felt it didn't make any difference who they voted for then, but feel differently about things now that they've seen the impact of Democratic control in Washington. On the Virginia exit poll 94% of respondents said who they voted for President last year and their responses average out to a 13.2% advantage for Bob McDonnell. Since McDonnell...

The March of bad news for the Democratic party continuances. On Sunday Rasmussen reported the number of people identifying themselves as Democrats was at a seven year low and that drop has happened every since Barack Obama was elected. Currently, 35.5% of American adults still admit that they are Democrats. It is still 1.5% more than the GOP but last December the number was. That’s down from 36.0 a month ago and from 37.8% in October. Last December the numbers were 41.6% for the Democrats and 32.8% for the GOP an 8.8% difference. Growing faster than the republicans are the...

Republican candidates start the year by opening a nine-point lead over Democrats, the GOP's biggest in several years, in the latest edition of the Generic Congressional Ballot. The new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 44% would vote for their district’s Republican congressional candidate while 35% would opt for his or her Democratic opponent.

The new Rasmussen poll of the Massachusetts Senate special election, which will be held two weeks from today, gives Democratic candidate Martha Coakley an initial lead over Republican Scott Brown. But it might not be an automatic landslide in this Democratic-leaning state, with GOP voters disproportionately more enthusiastic in what could be a low-turnout election. The numbers: Coakley 50%, Brown 41%, with a ±4.5% margin of error. From the pollster's analysis: "Special elections are typically decided by who shows up to vote and it is clear from the data that Brown's supporters are more enthusiastic. In fact, among those who...

A year ago, political, cultural, economic and media pundits were united in singing President-elect Obama's praises. They assured us that by working with enlightened congressional leaders like Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Obama would give us a post-racial, post-partisan, post-Bush Valhalla. There, no citizen would ever again be left wanting for decent health care, a rewarding job, a home warmed in winter and cooled in summer with green energy, a comfortable pension, or a college education. It would be an America in which our liberal leaders would finally deliver "change we can believe in" instead...

Sarah Palin almost nudged feminist's beloved Hillary out of the first place spot in the Gallup's recent Woman of the Year poll. The buzz from women who can't bring themselves to acknowledge Palin's self-made success is spiteful and loud, especially on the internet. Why is that? With the help of her husband, former President Bill Clinton, Hillary catapulted her career from a small city, small state Arkansas attorney to a failed run for president, finally settling for her present position as Obama's Secretary of Defense. Hillary has one daughter and a marriage that has seen more than its share of...

President Obama and the progressive wing of the party who dominate congress, has made identifying ones self as a Democrat is not as popular as it used to be. Witness the letter I pulled out of the Newspaper today: Dear Ann Landers, I lost my job at McDonalds last month for sleeping with the bosses daughter (I swear she looked 18). My parents are life-long progressive Democrats who live in the suburbs of San Francisco. My Father and Mother have recently been arrested for growing and selling marijuana, distribution of Cocaine, as well as Heroin. They are currently dependent on...

Politico: “He’s been underpolling Obama all year,” said Eric Boehlert of Media Matters, “People start thinking, ‘There’s something going on here.".......Obama on his own poll numbers (last month): "I'm surprised they held up as well as they did" (Video)

Well, he has been promising us a Christmas present. Republican candidates now have an eight-point lead over Democrats, their biggest lead of the year, in the latest edition of the Generic Congressional Ballot. The new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 44% would vote for their district’s Republican congressional candidate while 36% would opt for his or her Democratic opponent. Support for GOP candidates held steady over the past week, but support for Democrats slipped by a point. The simple truth is this: the closer this federally intrusive, probably unconstitutional, health care reform nightmare gets to being a reality,...

Obama Approval Index Month-by-Month Saturday, January 02, 2010 When tracking President Obama’s job approval on a daily basis, people sometimes get so caught up in the day-to-day fluctuations that they miss the bigger picture. To look at the longer-term trends, Rasmussen Reports compiles the numbers on a full-month basis, and the results can be seen in the graphics below. The president’s Approval Index ratings fell three points in December following two-point declines in both October and November. Looking back, the president’s honeymoon ended quickly before his ratings stabilized from March through May. They tumbled in June and July as the...

Low favorables: Dems rip Rasmussen By: Alex Isenstadt January 2, 2010 05:53 PM EST Democrats are turning their fire on Scott Rasmussen, the prolific independent pollster whose surveys on elections, President Obama’s popularity and a host of other issues are surfacing in the media with increasing frequency. The pointed attacks reflect a hardening conventional wisdom among prominent liberal bloggers and many Democrats that Rasmussen Reports polls are, at best, the result of a flawed polling model and, at worst, designed to undermine Democratic politicians and the party’s national agenda. On progressive-oriented websites, anti-Rasmussen sentiment is an article of faith. “Rasmussen...