Ap-gfk Poll: Obama Slips, Other Dems Slide, Too
The survey shows the political terrain growing rockier for Obama and congressional Democrats heading into midterm elections, boosting Republican hopes for a return to power this fall.
Just 49 percent of people now approve of the job Obamas doing overall, and less than that – 44 percent – like the way hes handled health care and the economy. Last September, Obama hit a low of 50 percent in job approval before ticking a bit higher. His high-water mark as president was 67 percent in February of last year, just after he took office.
The news is worse for other Democrats. For the first time this year, about as many Americans approve of congressional Republicans as Democrats – 38 percent to 41 percent – and neither has an edge when it comes to the party voters want controlling Congress. Democrats also have lost their advantage on the economy; people now trust both parties equally on that, another first in 2010.
Roughly half want to fire their own congressman.
Adding to Democratic woes, people have grown increasingly opposed to the health care overhaul in the weeks since it became law; 50 percent now oppose it, the most negative measure all year. People also have a dim view of the economy though employers have begun to add jobs, including 162,000 in March. Just as many people rated the economy poor this month – 76 percent – as did last July.
And it could get worse for Democrats: One-third of those surveyed consider themselves tea party supporters, and three-quarters of those people are overwhelmingly Republicans or right-leaning independents. That means they are more likely to vote with the GOP in this falls midterms, when energized base voters will be crucial amid the typical low turnout of a non-presidential election year.
With the electorate angry, Republicans enthusiastic and Democrats seemingly less so, Obamas party increasingly fears it could lose control of the House, if not the Senate, in his first midterms. The GOP, conversely, is emboldened as voters warm to its opposition to much of the presidents agenda.
On the minds of Democrats and Republicans alike: the Democratic bloodletting in 1994, when the GOP seized control of Congress two years after Bill Clinton was elected president. But the less-dispiriting news for Democrats is that its only April – a long way to November in politics.
Still, persuading change-minded voters to keep the status quo will be no easy task given that most people call details of the health care overhaul murky and that the unemployment rate is unlikely to fall below 9 percent by November.
The key for Obama and his party: firing up moribund Democratic voters while appealing to independents who are splitting their support after back-to-back national elections in which they tilted heavily toward Democrats and caused the power shift.
None of that will be easy.
Just listen to independent voters who typically decide elections.
Fall was just as down on the Democratic-controlled Congress: “Theyre horrible. I think all they do is talk,” he said, adding that Republicans acted no differently when they had power: “Just spend and spend and spend.”
In Spokane, Wash., Angela Hardin, 43, was just as disapproving.
“I dont like whats going on,” the small business owner said. “He is just making a huge mess out of everything. … Hes all over the map. Its like, Slow down! Breathe! Think!”
As for Democrats in Congress, she said: “Im not happy with them.” Republicans, she said, may be better. But shes really ambivalent toward any of them: “Its just beyond me how they can sit up there with all of their college degrees and fight like they were in middle school.”
The new poll findings also show: