AP-GfK Poll: More than half say Obama should lose

JENNIFER AGIESTA

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON — Enter­ing 2012, Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s re-election prospects are essen­tially a 50–50 propo­si­tion, with a major­ity say­ing the pres­i­dent deserves to be voted out of office despite con­cerns about the Repub­li­can alter­na­tives, accord­ing to a new Asso­ci­ated Press-GfK poll.

Obama’s over­all poll num­bers sug­gest he’s in jeop­ardy of los­ing, even as the public’s out­look on the econ­omy appears to be improv­ing, the AP-GfK poll found. For the first time since spring, more said the econ­omy got bet­ter in the past month than said it got worse.

The president’s approval rat­ing on unem­ploy­ment shifted upward — from 40 per­cent in Octo­ber to 45 per­cent in the lat­est poll — as the job­less rate fell to 8.6 per­cent last month, its low­est level since March 2009.

But Obama’s approval rat­ing on his han­dling of the econ­omy over­all remains stag­nant: 39 per­cent approve and 60 per­cent disapprove.

Head­ing into his re-election cam­paign, the pres­i­dent faces a con­flicted pub­lic that does not sup­port his steer­ing of the econ­omy, the most dom­i­nant issue for Amer­i­cans, or his reforms to health care, one of his sig­na­ture accom­plish­ments. Yet they are grap­pling with whether to replace him with Repub­li­can con­tenders Mitt Rom­ney or Newt Gingrich.

The poll found an even divide on whether Amer­i­cans expect Obama to be re-elected next year.

For the first time, the poll found that a major­ity of adults, 52 per­cent, said Obama should be voted out of office while 43 per­cent said he deserves another term. The num­bers mark a rever­sal since last May, when 53 per­cent said Obama should be re-elected while 43 per­cent said he didn’t deserve four more years.

Obama’s over­all job approval stands at a new low: 44 per­cent approve while 54 per­cent dis­ap­prove. The president’s stand­ing among inde­pen­dents is worse: 38 per­cent approve while 59 per­cent dis­ap­prove. Among Democ­rats, the pres­i­dent holds steady with an approval rat­ing of 78 per­cent while only 12 per­cent of Repub­li­cans approve of the job he’s doing.

“I think he’s doing the best he can. The prob­lem is the Con­gress won’t help at all,” said Rosario Navarro, a Demo­c­rat and a 44-year-old truck dri­ver from Fresno, Calif., who voted for Obama in 2008 and intends to sup­port him again.

Robin Dein, a 54-year-old home­maker from Vil­lanova, Pa., who is an inde­pen­dent, said she sup­ported Repub­li­can John McCain in 2008 and has not been impressed with Obama’s eco­nomic poli­cies. She intends to sup­port Rom­ney if he wins the GOP nomination.

“(Obama) spent the first part of his pres­i­dency blam­ing Bush for every­thing, not that he was inno­cent, and now his way of solv­ing any­thing is by spend­ing more money,” she said.

Despite the soft level of sup­port, many are uncer­tain whether a Repub­li­can pres­i­dent would be a bet­ter choice. Asked whom they would sup­port next Novem­ber, 47 per­cent of adults favored Obama com­pared with 46 per­cent for Rom­ney, a for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts gov­er­nor. Against Gin­grich, the pres­i­dent holds a solid advan­tage, receiv­ing 51 per­cent com­pared with 42 per­cent for the for­mer House speaker.

The poten­tial matchups paint a bet­ter pic­ture for the pres­i­dent among inde­pen­dents. Obama receives 45 per­cent of non-aligned adults com­pared with 41 per­cent for Rom­ney. Against Gin­grich, Obama holds a wide lead among inde­pen­dents, with 54 per­cent sup­port­ing the pres­i­dent and 31 per­cent back­ing the for­mer Geor­gia congressman.

Another piece of good news for Obama: peo­ple gen­er­ally like him per­son­ally. Obama’s per­sonal favor­a­bil­ity rat­ing held steady at 53 per­cent, with 46 per­cent view­ing him unfa­vor­ably. About three-quarters called him likable.

The econ­omy remains a source of pes­simism, though the poll sug­gests the first pos­i­tive move­ment in pub­lic opin­ion on the econ­omy in months. One in five said the econ­omy improved in the last month, dou­ble the share say­ing so in Octo­ber. Still most expect it to stay the same or get worse.

“I sup­pose you could make some sort of argu­ment that it’s get­ting bet­ter, but I’m not sure I even see that,” said inde­pen­dent voter John Bai­ley, a 61-year-old edu­ca­tion con­sul­tant from East Jor­dan, Mich. “I think it’s bad and it’s got­ten worse under (Obama’s) poli­cies. At best, it’s going to stay bad.”

Despite the high rate of job­less­ness, the poll found some opti­mism on the econ­omy. Although 80 per­cent described the econ­omy as “poor,” respon­dents describ­ing it “very poor” fell from 43 per­cent in Octo­ber to 34 per­cent in the lat­est poll, the low­est since May. Twenty per­cent said the econ­omy got bet­ter in the past month while 37 per­cent said they expected the econ­omy to improve next year.

Yet plenty of warn­ing signs remain for Obama. Only 26 per­cent said the United States is headed in the right direc­tion while 70 per­cent said the coun­try was mov­ing in the wrong direction.

The pres­i­dent won a sub­stan­tial num­ber of women vot­ers in 2008 yet there does not appear to be a sig­nif­i­cant tilt toward Obama among women now. The poll found 44 per­cent of women say Obama deserves a sec­ond term, down from 51 per­cent in Octo­ber, while 43 per­cent of men say the pres­i­dent should be re-elected.

About two-thirds of white vot­ers with­out col­lege degrees say Obama should be a one-term pres­i­dent, while 33 per­cent of those vot­ers say he should get another four years. Among white vot­ers with a col­lege degree, 57 per­cent said Obama should be voted out of office.

The poll found unpop­u­lar­ity for last year’s health care reform bill, one of Obama’s major accom­plish­ments. About half of the respon­dents oppose the health care law and sup­port for it dipped to 29 per­cent from 36 per­cent in June. Just 15 per­cent said the fed­eral gov­ern­ment should have the power to require all Amer­i­cans to buy health insurance.

Even among Democ­rats, the health care law has tepid sup­port. Fifty per­cent of Democ­rats sup­ported the health care law, com­pared with 59 per­cent of Democ­rats last June. Only about a quar­ter of inde­pen­dents back the law.

The pres­i­dent has taken a more pop­ulist tone in his han­dling of the econ­omy, argu­ing that the wealthy should pay more in taxes to help pay for the exten­sion of a pay­roll tax cut that would pro­vide about $1,000 in tax cuts to a fam­ily earn­ing about $50,000 a year. Among those with annual house­hold incomes of $50,000 or less, Obama’s approval rat­ing on unem­ploy­ment climbed to 53 per­cent, from 43 per­cent in October.

The Asso­ci­ated Press-GfK Poll was con­ducted Decem­ber 8–12 2011 by GfK Roper Pub­lic Affairs and Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions. It involved land­line and cell­phone inter­views with 1,000 adults nation­wide and has a mar­gin of sam­pling error of plus or minus 4 per­cent­age points.

Posted by AP News on Dec 16 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.