President Obama’s job-approval rating has dropped to a new low of 40 percent in the Gallup daily tracking poll, down from a relatively steady average of 46 percent in much of June and July. The low now coincides almost perfectly with the 41 percent approval rating he got from Americans in a recent survey for his handling of the deficit crisis.
The president was garnering only a 41 percent approval rating in April, before the debt-ceiling battle was really under way. He saw an uptick to 50 percent in May and June, just after he announced that U.S. forces had killed Osama bin Laden.
The good news is that Obama is still doing better than House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., in the deficit-crisis survey. He’s also still doing relatively well among Democrats, with a 72 percent approval rating in his own party--although that’s down from an average of 79 percent in the prior three weeks. Thirty-four percent of independents approve, down from a 41 percent approval rating in the previous three weeks. Only his low approval rating among Republicans (13 percent now, up from his 12 percent average the past three weeks) held relatively steady.
Gallup attributes part of the decline to a “generally sour mood” among Americans, as measured by the Economic Confidence Index--the measure of Americans’ ratings of current economic conditions and whether the economy is better better or rose--which is down 8 points in the last week and 19 points since early July.
The poll results were based on landline and cellular telephone interviews conducted from July 26 to 28 on the Gallup daily tracking survey with a random sample of 1,463 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. The margin of error is ±3 percentage points.
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