President Obama Still Struggling in the Polls

Even CNN has covered the incredible shrinking polling numbers for President Obama. We've documented it here, and in Rasmussen's latest Presidential job approval numbers, Obama is still in negative territory - not just with voters who strongly approve vs. those who strongly disapprove, but with voters overall.


Generally Approve: 47%
Generally Disapprove: 53%

Strongly Approve: 26%
Strongly Disapprove: 39%

Ouch. From lofty numbers to being underwater inside a year, one would think Obama's team could use a pitching change. But since my Dodgers lost, I'm moving on to football analogies: the Administration could at least use a huddle. It’s difficult to say what’s going on inside the Administration with its brain trust, but suffice it to say that this mid-term election campaign is in trouble.

Mid-term election campaign? Already? Yep. When you are governing, you really are campaigning by other means, to paraphrase an old political hand. And right now Obama's polling numbers are not good. Nancy Pelosi's are even worse and much of the Democrat agenda is not popular. All of this will affect how voters decide who to vote for in the 2010 mid-term elections: Republican or Democrat candidates for congress.

The Obama team’s strategy has been to run aggressively with their agenda, continuing the promise of significant change on a whole range of important federal policies. This has been a multi-pronged strategy on all fronts, a sort of all out blitz to overwhelm and win.

Based on their actions, the Administration believes voters support all or most of Obama’s agenda and therefore they will go for all of it at once. Obama wants to be a hugely transformative president and he believes either voters are on-board or they will be convinced he needs to do what he’s doing soon enough.

Team Obama’s problem is that they are misinterpreting election data and the voters’ mood. Yes, voters gave Democrats a strong majority in congress, and yes, voters said “NO” to John McCain. However, polling data on the major issues Obama is pushing shows that voters do not support the biggest aspects of his agenda.

Voters oppose Obama’s attempts to reform the health care industry. Voters say they do not want to see higher taxes. Voters are against any second attempt at a stimulus package. 53% oppose more regulation in the financial industry. 31% agree with Obama’s decision to yank the missile shield from east European countries while 38% disagree. 51% of voters say Obama has not been tough enough with Iran. Only 34% of voters think the first stimulus helped the economy and 45% of voters think the unspent money from the first stimulus should be canceled while 36% disagree.

The exclamation point to all this is that only 34% of voters say the country is headed in the right direction. If voters wanted to see Obama push his liberal agenda, they are certainly seeing it, and if they liked it, more than 34% would believe we are headed in the right direction.

The bad economy and high unemployment rate certainly wears on the ruling Party, and their attempt to pin all the problems on Bush are not paying off in the polls. Obama has one heck of a sales job ahead of him.