Free Republic

How has the Obama administration’s contraception mandate on religious organizations impacted Barack Obama’s standing? According to a new Rasmussen poll, it’s had about the impact one would expect after a few days of consideration. Almost six in ten Catholics now disapprove of Obama’s job performance, and a near-majority strongly disapprove: Catholics strongly disapprove of the job President Obama is doing as the debate continues over his administration’s new policy forcing Catholic institutions to pay for contraception they morally oppose. While the president’s overall job approval ratings have improved over the past couple of months, they have remained steady among Catholics....

Gallup released their annual state-by-state presidential approval numbers yesterday, and the results should have 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue very worried. If President Obama carries only those states where he had a net positive approval rating in 2011 (e.g. Michigan where he is up 48 percent to 44 percent), Obama would lose the 2012 election to the Republican nominee 323 electoral votes to 215. Gallup ads: Overall, Obama averaged 44% job approval in his third year in office, down from 47% in his second year. His approval rating declined from 2010 to 2011 in most states, with Wyoming, Connecticut, and Maine showing...

The number of Republicans in the country increased by a percentage point in December, while the number of Democrats fell back two points to the lowest level ever recorded by Rasmussen Reports. During December, 35.4% of Americans considered themselves Republicans. That’s up from 34.3% in November and just below the high for the year of 35.6% reached in May. At the same time, just 32.7% of adults said they were Democrats, down from 34.9% in November. The previous low for Democrats was 33.0% in August of this year.

According to the latest Gallup tracking poll, more Americans approve of the job that President Obama is doing than disapprove for the first time since this summer. The latest Gallup survey shows that 47 percent of Americans now say they approve of the way that President Obama is handling his job. This is a 5 percent improvement since the Dec. 16-18 Gallup survey and marks the first time the president's numbers have been in positive territory since July. The number of Americans who say they disapprove of Obama's job performance has fallen to 45 percent, down 5 points from Dec....

President Obama's slow ride down Gallup's daily presidential job approval index has finally passed below Jimmy Carter, earning Obama the worst job approval rating of any president at this stage of his term in modern political history. Since March, Obama's job approval rating has hovered above Carter's, considered among the 20th century's worst presidents, but today Obama's punctured Carter's dismal job approval line. On their comparison chart, Gallup put Obama's job approval rating at 43 percent compared to Carter's 51 percent.

At this point, President Obama has got to be sick of hearing about buyer's remorse from Democratic voters; and I'm sure Hillary Clinton is getting sick of hearing about why she should run against Obama in 2012, but the calls for Obama to step down and for Clinton to step up are only getting louder. Democratic pollsters Doug Schoen and Patrick Caddell have said Obama should step aside before, and they did it again over the weekend in the Wall Street Journal. He should abandon his candidacy for re-election in favor of a clear alternative, one capable not only of...

President Obama's cheerleaders are starting to peel away along with his approval ratings, and it's a fascinating sight to behold. They offer different reasons, but they all boil down to one obvious thing -- Obama is first and foremost about Obama -- and one less obvious: He has been a failed president. Democratic pollsters Pat Caddell and Doug Schoen, admittedly more centrist than most of their Democratic counterparts, penned an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal urging Obama "to abandon his candidacy for re-election." The authors conclude that the only way Obama could possibly win in 2012 would be "to...

EXCERPT A majority — 53 percent — said Obama deserves “a great deal” or a “moderate amount” of the blame for the economic problems that the United States currently faces, the USA Today/Gallup poll from mid-September shows. This figure has jumped from 32 percent in July 2009, after Obama had been in office for only six months

If recent polls are any indication, it is doubtful that President Obama will enjoy another 1,000 days in the White House. And looking at his track record over the course of his first 33 months in office, it is not hard to see why. It is hard to think of a presidency in modern times that has done more to damage the United States both at home and abroad than the current one, with the possible exception of Jimmy Carter’s. Like his Democratic predecessor in the 1970’s, Barack Obama has left the world’s dominant superpower on its knees, with faith...

Four in 10 Americans “strongly” disapprove of how President Obama is handling job as president in the new Washington Post-ABC News poll, the highest that number has risen during his time in office and a sign of the hardening opposition to him as he seeks a second term. While the topline numbers are troubling enough, dig deeper into them and the news gets no better for Obama. Forty-three percent of independents — a group the president spent the better part of the last year courting — strongly disapprove of the job he is doing. Forty seven percent of people 65...

Electoral racism in its most egregious form is the unwillingness of whites to vote for blacks regardless of qualifications or ideology. So far, Barack Obama has been involved in two elections that suggest such racism is no longer operative. His reelection bid, however, may indicate that a more insidious form of racism has replaced it. The 2004 Illinois Senate race between Obama and Alan Keyes, two African Americans, was a unique test of old-fashioned electoral racism. For a truly committed racist, neither would have been acceptable. In 2008, the long primary battle between Hillary Clinton and Obama added hundreds of...

African Americans appear to be cooling their support for President Obama, with “strongly favorable” views of the president dropping dramatically from 83 percent five months ago to 58 percent today, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows. The drop in support among black voters mirrors the declining support for Obama among all groups.

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows that 21% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as president. Forty-two percent (42%) Strongly Disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -21. Overall, 46% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the president's job performance. Fifty-two percent (52%) at least somewhat disapprove.

United States President Barack Obama enjoyed the support of an estimated 80% of U.S. Jews in the 2008 elections. However, recent polls indicate he will be receiving far less Jewish support in 2012. Polls taken before the GOP upset in New York’s 9th District showed that Obama’s treatment of Israel was a crucial issue for many voters in the heavily Jewish area – and only 22% were satisfied with the way he had been relating to Israel.

[snip] Over his presidency so far, Obama's support among Jews has run about 14 percentage points higher than his support among the population at large, with some fluctuations largely due to the relatively small number of Jews in any given polling sample, Gallup reports. The gap in the most recent tally is 13 points. A similar point can be made about Latinos – another group whose declining support for Obama is sometimes attributed to group-specific issues, in this case the failure to bring about comprehensive changes in the nation's immigration policies. Again, as with Jews, the polling data show something...

President Barack Obama's support among Jews has dropped, new data shows. Four out of 10 Jewish Americans currently disapprove of Obama, according to polling data provided to POLITICO by Gallup, which has yet to post the numbers on its website. This 40 percent disapproval rating is 8 percent higher than the 32 percent disapproval rating among Jewish Americans that was last reported by Gallup in June. Obama's approval rating among Jewish Americans is also down to 55 percent - a five point drop from his approval rating in June, which stood at 60 percent. Together, the rise in disapproval and...

A new poll released Thursday morning shows President Obama's approval rating is dropping in Virginia -- a battleground state the Democrat took from Republicans en route to winning the White House in 2008. These new numbers show the president’s disapproval rating has spiked in Virginia to 54 percent. The Quinnipiac University Poll is based on telephone interviews with 1,368 registered voters between September 7-12. The results mirror other polls that show a continuing slide in the president’s popularity in a slow, troubled economy. Fifty-one percent of those surveyed say they do not think President Obama deserves to be re-elected. That’s...

Gallup tracks daily the percentage of Americans who approve or disapprove of the job Barack Obama is doing as president. Results are based on telephone interviews with approximately 1,500 national adults; Margin of error is ±3 percentage points.

<p>RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — President Barack Obama's disapproval rating has soared to 54 percent in Virginia, a battleground state the Democrat took from the Republicans to win the White House in 2008 and will likely need to carry next year to win re-election, a new poll released Thursday shows.</p>

<p>Republican Bob Turner’s victory in the closely watched special election to replace disgraced Rep. Anthony Weiner delivered an unmistakable message to President Obama: Be afraid, be very afraid, of what’s coming down the pike in 2012.</p> <p>That a Brooklyn-Queens district where Democrats outnumber Republicans 3 to 1 could swing to a GOP candidate who was outspent and outmanned -- and where unions poured in enormous resources in the final hours -- doesn’t bode well for a president facing re-election in a queasy economy.</p>

CNN Poll: President gets no bounce from speech, but disapproval rating peaks mug.cnnpolitics By: CNN Political Unit Washington (CNN) - President Barack Obama didn't score any political points with his speech on jobs to a joint session of Congress last Thursday. According to a new CNN/ORC International poll released Tuesday, the president's approval rating stands at 43 percent, virtually unchanged from the 45 percent approval rating in the previous CNN poll. Although this is not the lowest number of those who say they approve of how Obama is handling his job-he reached 42 percent one year ago-the number who disapprove...

STAUNTON, Va. – Whether it is called General Lee Highway, as in Virginia, or Molly Pitcher Highway, as in Pennsylvania, the lives and economic strain along U.S. Route 11 tell of a country’s disappointment with Washington – specifically, with President Obama. The north–south highway, created in 1926, extends more than 1,600 miles from New York to Louisiana. It is one of those blue lines you find on a gas-station road atlas, obscured by the bold red lines of the dominant interstates. Woodrow Wilson’s home is along this road in Virginia, James Buchanan’s in Pennsylvania. In between those presidential homes is...

Black voters remain defiantly loyal to Obama, despite suffering from his mishandling of the economy and Maxine Waters' complaints about his focus on wooing white independent voters for his reelection. But of course, Democrats have long taken blacks for granted. This loyalty in the face of bad treatment is reminiscent of battered wife syndrome (BWS).

Among all respondents, only 37% approve of the job the President is doing and 57% disapprove of the job he is doing. Again looking at key voter subgroups, 53% of women, 56% of independents, 72% of Hispanics and 59% of seniors disapprove of the job Barack Obama is doing. SNIP Among all respondents, 37% think Barack Obama deserves re�election and 57% think he does not deserve re�election. SNIP Link to Hot Air article.Link to Magellan Strategies PDF survey results.

dpaAs America's first black president, Barack Obama electrified an entire nation. But now that the nation is in crisis, he seems unable to connect with the people. He wanted to change America and restore its reputation in the world. But now his opponents are dictating the country's political course.

Majority of US Jews disapproves of Obama's Arab-Israeli conflict policy; separate poll shows Muslims blame West for domestic problems. WASHINGTON – US President Barack Obama handily defeats his current Republican presidential opponents among Jewish voters, according to a poll put out by J Street Thursday. At the same time, the majority of American Jews disapproves of his handling of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the poll found. Obama currently enjoys 63 percent of the American Jewish vote compared to 24% for Mitt Romney and 67% when facing off against Michele Bachmann, who received 19% support, according to the poll. Romney, the former...

PRINCETON, NJ -- President Obama's job approval rating averaged 46% for the week ending June 12, a significant decline from his weekly averages for most of May and nearly back to the level before Osama bin Laden's death on May 1. Among partisan groups, independents' approval rating of Obama dropped the most in the past week, from 47% to 42%, with a smaller decline among Democrats. Republicans' approval of Obama spiked to 21% during the first week after bin Laden's death from 10% in late April, before falling back to the 15% range, where it has held since. Obama's approval...

Clear eyed observers recognize Barack Obama will not have an easy road to reelection. A steady stream of poor, and outright suspicious, decisions has become the hallmark of his administration. He stands exposed him as a man overmatched by the demands of his office. Obama’s well documented failings will provide ample material for whomever the GOP nominates. Nevertheless, the worst enemy of Obama’s reelection chances may be inexorably building without much notice. The worst calamity a candidate can face is being laughed at, but the second worst is being ignored. Evidence that the voting public may be ignoring Obama is...

Wow! The AP poll has Obama’s approval rating hitting 60 percent! And 53 percent say he deserves to be reelected! And on the economy, 52 percent approve of the way Obama’s handling it, and only 47 percent disapprove! He’s up 54–46 on approval of how he’s handling health care! On unemployment, 52 percent approval, 47 percent disapproval! 57 percent approval on handling Libya! Even on the deficit, he’s at 47 percent approval, 52 percent disapproval! It is a poll of adults, which isn’t surprising; as I mentioned yesterday, you don’t have to be a registered or likely voter to have...

President Barack Obama’s weekly approval rating remained at its all-time low for the second straight week, according to the Gallup poll. In the week of April 11-17 and again in the week of April 18-24, 43 percent of the Americans polled by Gallup said they approved of the job Obama was doing as president. That matched the all-time low for Obama’s weekly approval in the Gallup poll. Previously, Obama had earned a 43 percent approval rating in the back-to-back weeks of Aug. 16-22, 2010 and Aug. 23-29, 2010. Obama’s weekly approval rating peaked at 67 percent in the week of...

President Obama on Thursday suggested his lagging poll numbers are due to high gas prices around the nation. Speaking to supporters at his sixth fundraising event in California, Obama conceded that gas prices are having an effect on how people view his administration, but indicated he is prepared to weather the storm. "My poll numbers go up and down depending on the latest crisis and right now gas prices are weighing heavily on people," he told a gathering of backers at a Los Angeles restaurant, according to a pool report. Pollsters have said that rising gas prices have played a...

A new IBOPE Zogby Interactive poll shows President Barack Obama's approval rating at 42 percent, the lowest since December, when it hit 39 percent. The poll also finds likely voters split over whether or not a government shutdown would be harmful to the economic recovery. Forty-nine percent say they agree a government shutdown would hurt the recovery, 45 percent say they disagree and 6 percent are not sure. When it comes to the three agree-disagree questions, responses of Republicans and Democrats are sharply divergent. Republicans are more likely than Democrats to agree military spending should be exempt from cuts and...

The latest Pew Research Center national poll released today underscores how slender a beachhead President Obama has established among whites more than two years into his presidency. In his 2008 election, Obama ran well only among two groups of whites -- young people and white women with at least a four year college education, two groups that are generally receptive to government activism. In the 2010 GOP landslide, those groups stuck with Democrats relatively more loyally than the rest of the white electorate, but the party's support tumbled even among them. Figures provided to National Journal by Pew from the...

PRINCETON, NJ -- Americans have grown increasingly less likely to view President Obama as a strong and decisive leader since he took office. Roughly half now believe this aptly describes, him compared with 60% a year ago and 73% in April 2009. Obama's ratings on being a strong and decisive leader are down a total of 21 percentage points since taking office, compared with a 15-point decline on understanding Americans' daily problems and a 9-point decline in sharing their values. Obama's overall job approval rating declined 16 points over the same time period. The March 25-27 poll also asked Americans...

President Barack Obama’s approval rating and prospects for reelection have plunged to all-time lows in a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday. Half of the registered voters surveyed for the poll think that the president does not deserve a second term in office, while 41 percent say he does. In another Quinnipiac poll released just four weeks ago, 45 percent said the president did not deserve reelection, while 47 percent said he did. The decline in support for a second Obama term comes as his approval rating has dropped 4 percentage points since early March, landing at 42 percent – a...

Just saw the segment on Fox and Friends discussing Obama's current 48% approval rate--similar to Reagan's and Clinton's at the same point in their first terms --of course they went on to be re-elected. This is the new realm we live in. Nowadays things are completely dominated by the media spin--what they say goes. They protect this unprecedented and very likely criminal incompetent so thoroughly, sing his praises, wrap him in gossamer PR and the 'asleep at the wheel, entertainment distracted and obsessed' public buys it. The only way this ultimately straightens out is for the media to learn after...

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Thursday shows that 21% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as president. Forty-one percent (41%) Strongly Disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -20

In the prologue to the second of his autobiographies, "The Audacity of Hope," Barack Obama said: "I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views." Stanford University professor Shelby Steele, who, like Mr. Obama, has a black father and a white mother, thinks the key to Mr. Obama's popularity in 2008 was his racial identity. "Obama's special charisma ... always came much more from the racial idealism he embodied than from his political ideas," wrote Mr. Steele.The desire among whites to rid themselves of racial guilt crossed party and ideological lines,...

Remember all that talk about Barack Obama’s bounce in the polls after the lame-duck session? We can officially proclaim that duck cooked now, and the bouncing cat officially dead, or at least comatose. Gallup’s latest survey on issues and presidential approval shows Obama below a majority on every single issue — and seriously underwater in the highest priorities for voters in the last midterm election: President Barack Obama’s approval rating for handling the federal budget deficit has gone from bad to worse in recent months, even as his ratings on all other major national issues have generally held steady. Currently,...

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Thursday shows that 26% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as president. Forty-one percent (41%) Strongly Disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -15 Overall, 47% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the president's performance. Fifty-three percent (53%) disapprove.

The Egyptian people are reentering history. The masses have awakened, swarming in the streets against autocracy, chanting “Yes we can!” It’s too bad they hate America.In June 2009, President Obama launched his much heralded outreach effort to the Muslim people with a speech in Cairo. Now the people of that city are clamoring for reform, but their view of the United States is worse than it was at the height of the George W. Bush administration. According to survey data from the Pew Global Attitudes Project released in June 2010, the United States had a 30 percent approval

How can a Dem president tell that his SOTU was a for-real floperewski? When even Andrea Mitchell pans it. Yet that's precisely what NBC's chief foreign affairs correspondent did on Morning Joe today. What was particularly unkind about Andrea's cut was that she criticized both the form and the substance of the speech. After observing that Pres. Obama's oratory lacked "energy" and "passion," Mitchell opined that "it doesn't add up. The dollars and cents don't add up." Ouch. Before Andrea's assessment, the rest of the panel, with the notable exception of Howard Dean who managed to defend the speech, took...

Americans responded with overwhelming positivity to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech, two polls conducted after the Tuesday night speech found...

Whether the tragic shooting in Tucson will have any lasting political impact remains to be seen, but so far, it doesn't seem to have affected the way Americans view President Obama's job performance.The latest Gallup poll, reflecting interviews taken after his widely-praised speech at the memorial service last Wednesday, shows that 48 percent of Americans approve of Obama, compared with 42 percent who disapprove. That's little changed from the survey taken just before the shooting, which showed 48 percent approval and 43 percent disapproval -- a statistically insignificant difference.

Moving to the center is not a two-dimensional process. It has a third dimension -- the difference between strength and weakness. In the course of coming in from the cold of his extreme far-left positions, the president looks like a wimp, abandoning his long-held views in the face of electoral defeats, adverse court rulings, recalcitrant Democrats and strong, united Republican opposition. And wimps don't win. When Bill Clinton moved to the center, he arrived in triumph. After vanquishing the Republican Congress during the government shutdown of 1995-1996, he agreed to a balanced budget deal with Newt Gingrich and Trent Lott....

Let's give Kathleen Parker credit for not badgering rock star Gene Simmons with, "Yeah, but aren't I as awesome and chic and cute as Sarah Palin is stupid?" Such restraint on the part of someone so "unqualified" to co-host a television show next to a guy smarter than she is, who runs circles around her, is admirable. Parker's sucking up to the left under the mistaken belief they wouldn't smell weakness and abuse it for every partisan advantage is a "naive" mistake Sarah Palin never made - you know, the Sarah Palin with the successful TV show and bright future

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Saturday shows that 22% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as president. Forty-one percent (41%) Strongly Disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -19...Overall, 43% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the president's performance. Fifty-six percent (56%) disapprove.

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Resurgent Republicans smashed the Democratic power monopoly, exit polls projected, in a debilitating blow to President Barack Obama just two years after he took power on a tide of hope and history. Exploiting fear and fury over the stuttering economic rebound, Republicans grabbed back the House of Representatives, though Obama's beleaguered Democrats looked certain to cling onto the Senate, though with a badly reduced majority. "We've come to take our government back!" cried Rand Paul, a hero of the ultra-conservative Tea Party movement, after winning a Senate seat in Kentucky. "There's a Tea Party tidal wave," he...

As the second anniversary of Barack Obama’s electoral victory approaches, a considerable proportion of Americans believe that their President has not been able to fulfill their expectations, a new Angus Reid Public Opinion poll has found. More than seven-in-ten respondents disapprove of the way the U.S. Congress is doing its job. As the second anniversary of Barack Obama’s electoral victory approaches, a considerable proportion of Americans believe that their President has not been able to fulfill their expectations, a new Angus Reid Public Opinion poll has found. The online survey of a representative national sample of 1,011 American adults also...

If you’re a left-of-center media personality and you use your national TV platform to call a candidate for the United States Senate a “bitch,” how might you be rewarded? Apparently in this day and age, you’re granted an interview with a former sitting president of your political party. Even though he wasn’t one of the most distinguished presidents of the United States, former President Jimmy Carter appeared on Joy Behar’s HLN program to promote his book, “White House Diary.” During his interview, Behar asked Carter to offer his assessment of Barack Obama’s performance as president. ...more (w/video)...