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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)...