AP-GfK poll: Slow recovery weakens Obama support

JIM KUHNHENN

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON — Mired in eco­nomic worry, Amer­i­cans are grow­ing gloomier about where the coun­try is headed and how Pres­i­dent Barack Obama is lead­ing it. Opin­ions of the econ­omy are at the low­est of the year as high gas prices, ane­mic hir­ing and finan­cial tur­moil abroad shake a nation’s confidence.

Obama has hit new highs he’d like to avoid — in pub­lic dis­ap­proval over his han­dling of the econ­omy in gen­eral and unem­ploy­ment in par­tic­u­lar — accord­ing to a new Asso­ci­ated Press-GfK poll. In addi­tion, more dis­ap­prove of his han­dling of health care and the fed­eral bud­get deficit than in the past.

The poll shows that four out of five peo­ple now believe the econ­omy is in poor shape. And, sep­a­rately, Fed­eral Reserve Chair­man Ben Bernanke said Wednes­day that some causes of the slow­down, includ­ing a depressed hous­ing mar­ket, could per­sist into next year. Bernanke said the Fed believes growth will pick up going into 2012 but at a slower pace than expected.

How slow is a mat­ter of high inter­est at the White House. A lit­tle more than 16 months before the Novem­ber 2012 elec­tion, the pub­lic is split on whether the pres­i­dent deserves a sec­ond term.

For the first time this year in AP-GfK polling, respon­dents who say Obama deserves re-election have fallen below 50 per­cent into a vir­tual split of 48–47 in favor, a demand­ing chal­lenge for him. Eco­nomic con­cern has quickly stripped away the gloss he briefly gained after the death of Osama bin Laden.

Obama’s re-election team is no doubt con­cerned as well. The pres­i­dent has been trav­el­ing every week for months to cam­paign bat­tle­ground states to pro­mote job ini­tia­tives. He acknowl­edges the slug­gish­ness of the recov­ery, illus­trated by May’s uptick in unemployment.

The price of gaso­line at the pump has declined a bit recently though it is still nearly 90 cents higher on aver­age than a year ago. White House offi­cials are also mon­i­tor­ing the pre­car­i­ous fis­cal sit­u­a­tion in Greece where a default by the gov­ern­ment could send dam­ag­ing finan­cial tremors across world markets.

Obama’s over­all approval rat­ing fell to 52 per­cent in the new poll, in line with his rat­ings before the dar­ing raid in Pak­istan by U.S. com­man­dos last month that killed bin Laden.

The ero­sion of approval is pri­mar­ily among women. Last month, 57 per­cent said they felt he deserved re-election, a fig­ure that dipped to 48 per­cent this month. The decline came almost entirely among white women, just 37 per­cent of whom say Obama deserves re-election in the new poll. He also lost sup­port among self-described inde­pen­dents, from 62 per­cent approval last month to 43 per­cent now, his low­est since June 2010.

“I just think that he’s not doing his job the way he should be,” said Mary Per­rine, a grand­mother of three from West Lafayette, Ind., who said she has had to strug­gle to pay her bills.

Obama faced 59 per­cent dis­ap­proval on his han­dling of the econ­omy and on unem­ploy­ment. The steep­est decrease was among respon­dents with incomes above $50,000. In May, 53 per­cent approved of his efforts to fight unem­ploy­ment; in June 36 per­cent approved.

Still, the poll also showed the pub­lic to be con­flicted about the pres­i­dent. And their per­cep­tions about the national econ­omy were often at odds with their own per­sonal experiences.

More peo­ple — 56 per­cent of respon­dents — had a favor­able impres­sion of Obama him­self than approved of his per­for­mance. More­over, about three-quarters of the sur­vey par­tic­i­pants said it is unre­al­is­tic to expect notice­able results on the econ­omy in one term.

And despite the over­whelm­ing sen­ti­ment that the national econ­omy is in poor shape, more than three of five of those polled rated the finan­cial sit­u­a­tion of their own house­holds as good. While glum about the cur­rent state of the econ­omy, one-third said they expect it to get bet­ter over the next year. Less than a third said it would get worse, and the remain­der said it would remain the same.

In another con­so­la­tion for the pres­i­dent, he rates far bet­ter than Con­gress with the pub­lic. Con­gres­sional job dis­ap­proval climbed to 76 per­cent in the poll, a new high.

“I kind of sit on the fence about it,” Paul Fenger, a Cot­ton­wood, Minn., farmer said about Obama’s job performance.

“I think he is try­ing to do a good job, but the infor­ma­tion isn’t get­ting out, and Con­gress— the Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats— aren’t work­ing together.”

Obama may have to count on the likes of John Hold­nak, a Florida Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion admin­is­tra­tor, who didn’t vote for him in 2008 but believes “he has really stepped up to do this job.”

Does Obama deserve re-election? “I don’t know yet. A lot of things can hap­pen now and between the elec­tion that could be his fault. At this par­tic­u­lar junc­ture, he hasn’t done any­thing in my mind not to be re-elected,” said Hold­nak, one of the sur­vey participants.

The poll was con­ducted June 16–20 by GfK Roper Pub­lic Affairs and Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions. It involved land­line and cell­phone inter­views with 1,001 adults nation­wide and had a mar­gin of sam­pling error of plus or minus 4.1 per­cent­age points.

Posted by AP News on Jun 22 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.