NEWS JUNKIE POST
Jul 24, 2009 at 4:33 pmPoll Showing Drop In Obama’s Approval Rating Is Biased
The right-wing media wasted no time in spreading the results of a poll that shows President Barack Obama’s popularity dropping to 49 percent. Some may say that this is just the ammunition that the GOP was looking for to derail Obama’s agenda.
According to the Rasmussen Reports daily poll, 49 percent of Americans say they at least “somewhat approve” of the President’s performance, while 30 percent think the president is doing a good job. Some 38 percent of Americans disapprove of Obama entirely.
But most people won’t really look into who conducted the poll; perhaps if they find out that Scott Rasmussen was a paid consultant for W. Bush’s 2004 election, they may doubt the pollster’s objectivity. The fact that mostly right-wing/conservative groups and media use Rasmussen polls, should also give people a clue of whom he caters to.
This is a snippet from an article published on rightwingpundits.com shortly after the poll’s results were released Friday:
If one examines the numbers, Obama is currently one of the most unpopular Presidents in modern American history for a President just six months in office. As we reported here, generally Presidents are very popular in at least their first year.
It’s this type of rhetoric that will be coming down the pipe in the next few days and weeks about this poll. So, braze yourself for Obama’s new game plan: A) A softer stance on the issues that matter, B) More of his permission to have Republicans gut out any good legislation, C) More cocktails with Republicans at the White House. I’m hoping for D) Press on and don’t let the GOP ruin the chance we have for desperately needed change.
Let’s keep our fingers crossed that Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann will hold down the fort and that they expose Rasmussen’s toxic garbage.
PS As you can see I am not a typist but you get my drift above.
Guess we’ll see if Obama is still the great one, come 2012. If he loses, I’m sure you’ll have another excuse for that one. The left is really starting to scare me.
My fear is that the corruption of the Obama-Axelrod-Emanuel-Acorn-etc. machine will manipulate the election to the extent that Obama would win no matter what!
Obama is going down from what I hear from people that voted for him.
They lost their jobs this year and see no end in sight.
I voted for Obama, and I can’t wait to do it again in 2012. Do you really think Obama’s poll numbers are bad? Have you seen the poll numbers for the Republican party? They’ll be lucky to finish ahead of Ralph Nader/ Jesse Ventura ticket in 2012. Sooner or later the slow types will realize that the Republicans are responsible for over 90% of the public debt they are so worried about all of a sudden and the democrats will be on their way to enjoying the type of dominance they had before the civil rights era.
I would like to see your resource information backing up those claims. By all accounts that I have read The Democrats are responsible for this fiasaco we call our economy. This all dates back to the corrupt Clinton era. Long before Bush ever took office. Besides if you believe everything you hear on MSNBC, CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, news, I have ocean front property in Iowa for sale.
I really hope Maddow and Olbermann try to “expose Rasmussen’s toxic garbage”, beings since they themselves use his polling numbers for their own agenga. This would expose them as the true toxic garbage we know they already are.
The only problem with your argument is that the supposedly biased Rasmussen predicted the election results down to within a fraction of one percent. Seems if they were as biased as you think, they would have “cooked the books” to try to sway the election.
Rasmussen may have worked for Bush. Their polls, however, had Obama winning the election and they were not off by even 1 percentage point in their polls. Most Left leaning polls biased their numbers to expect Obama to win by more, Most others that would be accused of being conservative showed the margins closer or even McCain winning. Their (Rasmussen’s) track record with accuracey is much better than Gallup or the Washington Post. I am sure that if Obama has sensible people, they are taking note. I am not sure if I hope they do or not. IF they are buying the bull that people like the author here are trying to peddle, his adminsistration will be emboldened to act even more “stupidly” and the effect will be an even more racially polarized nation, which is *not* good for any of us. It will set us back years in trying to get past the issue of Race. However, the bright side of that is that would be political suicide for Obama-san and any Democrat who sided with him against his own “Blue Dog” conservative Democrats. The fact that he has a Union demanding an appology unlines his greatest weakness here. He is more and more being seen as partial in his views. Reverend Wright is going to haunt him still further into his term, even more so if he continues to make blunders like he is of late. He has to tone down the racial rhetoric. It can only do him and the nation harm. Of course, then he runs the risck of being labeled an “Uncle Tom” by people who are angered that he is not being beligerent enough. I am sorry, but my opinion there is that those people have been beligerent enough for all of us, and we have been way too tolerant of their vitriol for far too long. The idiocy of blame based on race needs to stop!
I couldn’t have said it better, Mel. I was outraged that our president would show such racial bias. Peace and true equality in this country will leave no room for the blame game.
BTW, Michelle Obama’s involvement with Chicago Hospitals that are turning away poor people is a *real* big negative to his whole agenda. If someone as supposedly “squeaky clean” as his wife can be found to be doing some things like this, what hope is there that any Government Program will long escape corruption?
Well I dont know if you can read, but if you can, you would have read that the poll explains that they take a sample of LIKELY VOTERS. Other polls like Gallup, take a sample of ADULTS. So LV sample for obama’s approval rating tend to be less than adults, since young adults (18-25) tend to be more enthusiastic about obama, but less likely to vote. If you don’t like their methodology then, u can critize the methodology, but calling just a bias, is complete crap. Rasmussen, has proven itself over the years to be very accurate predictor and a good polling institute that does its polling well.
I notice when the Rasmussen showed Obama doing quite well and even winning the election you had no concern of bias then? In fact I’m quite confident you embraced those polls. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. The truth is, the biggest problem with America today is government intervention. Where-ever they intervene they tend to make matters worse not better. You have medicare, medicaid, and social security, 3 government run programs that are trillions in debt, and now you hear the administrations saying it wants to create an even larger program (Health bill) If I had the track record the Gov. had and I worked in private industry I’d be fired, and certainly not given a larger program to run. Americans are simply responding to common sense.
At this point in the political cycle, the top line poll numbers really don’t matter much. What is significant is the trend line. Whether you take the low Rasmussen number of 49% or the high Gallup number of 54% is irrelivant. In both cases the number has been trending steadily lower over the past years, and also in both cases Obama’s aproval ratings just are not dramatically better than those of recent presidents at the same stage in their first term, despite that he had a significant head start over Clinton (who won with less than 45% of the vote in a three way race) and Bush (who lost the popular vote as well).
Ummm… “past months”
Let’s hope you don’t drown in kool-aide. Rasmussen, Gallup and Zogby are the best pollsters.
Everyone one I talk to is very dissapointed with Obama believe it or not.They are saying oh my god I didn’t know he would be trying to make history everyday we thought he was going to create jobs and the list of broken promises go on.Obamas ego seems to be number 1 priority.
Yeah because Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann are so fair and balanced, they will certainly bring the poll into perspective. Hogwash!!!
All one needs to do is look at the “internals” of any poll, such as the NYT poll in which their idea of an accurate demographic is 20% republicans, 35% democrats, and 45% independents. It does not take a genius to understand who is biasing the polls and who is not. It is also noteable that rasmussen is the number one pollster based on *reality* and accuracy in past elections and such. Maddow and Olberman (and many others in the government controlled media) are depserately trying to prop this stinker of an administration up, but folks are just too smart for that bs.