The Official Obama Approval Ratings Thread

[HagridOfTheDeep]

On the other hand, there are groups of people who think Obama is doing an "okay" job but expected so much more of him. I think a sizable junk of Obama's approval is shaky and displeased approval. Those are the people who could be willing to give Mitt a chance.

[WhyteRain]

After the Reagan Revolution of the early-80s, there were only two recessions an, d both were extraordinarily mild (the early 1990s and early 2000s).  That is why the Democrats think they can get away with claiming that the 2007-09 recession was "different, worse than every other recession".

Americans over 50 have an obligation to tell young people, that no, the recent recession was not substantially worse than either the 1973-75 or the 1980-82 ones.  The difference is that those recessions were followed by ROBUST recoveries.  GDP growth in 1976-78 averaged 5.5% and in 1983-85 averaged 6.0%.  Obama's GDP growth, 2010-12 (with two quarters left to go) has averaged a miserable 1.9%

[Comrade Funk]

After the Reagan Revolution of the early-80s, there were only two recessions an, d both were extraordinarily mild (the early 1990s and early 2000s).  That is why the Democrats think they can get away with claiming that the 2007-09 recession was "different, worse than every other recession".

Americans over 50 have an obligation to tell young people, that no, the recent recession was not substantially worse than either the 1973-75 or the 1980-82 ones.  The difference is that those recessions were followed by ROBUST recoveries.  GDP growth in 1976-78 averaged 5.5% and in 1983-85 averaged 6.0%.  Obama's GDP growth, 2010-12 (with two quarters left to go) has averaged a miserable 1.9%

1.) The early 90s recession started because of the end of the Cold War, which saw the demise of a lot of defense industry jobs. 90s prosperity was due to the computer revolution and the dot.com bubble.
2.) The dot.com bubble recession saw the demise of most dot.com companies, and was mainly a market recession, though unemployment breifly reached 6%. Unlike the 90s, wages and family income never increased all that much. Not to mention the housing bubble was in it's infancy, which helped the market a lot.
3.) This recession alomst saw the demise of AIG and major investment banks. Without the bailouts and federal takeovers, it would have been another depression. There's a reason people and economists called it the worse financial collapse since the Great Depression, and this was before Obama became president.

Please continue to spin though.

[WhyteRain]

After the Reagan Revolution of the early-80s, there were only two recessions an, d both were extraordinarily mild (the early 1990s and early 2000s).  That is why the Democrats think they can get away with claiming that the 2007-09 recession was "different, worse than every other recession".

Americans over 50 have an obligation to tell young people, that no, the recent recession was not substantially worse than either the 1973-75 or the 1980-82 ones.  The difference is that those recessions were followed by ROBUST recoveries.  GDP growth in 1976-78 averaged 5.5% and in 1983-85 averaged 6.0%.  Obama's GDP growth, 2010-12 (with two quarters left to go) has averaged a miserable 1.9%

1.) The early 90s recession started because of the end of the Cold War, which saw the demise of a lot of defense industry jobs. 90s prosperity was due to the computer revolution and the dot.com bubble.
2.) The dot.com bubble recession saw the demise of most dot.com companies, and was mainly a market recession, though unemployment breifly reached 6%. Unlike the 90s, wages and family income never increased all that much. Not to mention the housing bubble was in it's infancy, which helped the market a lot.
3.) This recession alomst saw the demise of AIG and major investment banks. Without the bailouts and federal takeovers, it would have been another depression. There's a reason people and economists called it the worse financial collapse since the Great Depression, and this was before Obama became president.

Please continue to spin though.

Since you didn't dispute anything I said, I'm not sure how to respond.

To "spin" again, I say that yes, the 2007-09 recession was long and deep -- but it was not substantially worse than either the 1973-75 or 1980-82 recessions.  The fact that there were (real and threatened) bank collapses in 2007-09 did not make it worse.  Anyway, the government has now given so much money to the banks that interest rates are, incredibly, going negative!  This is because so few Americans have the confidence to take out loans.

The fact is that all these recessions reached their deepest points in the first quarters of their last year -- in 1Q '75, 1Q '82, and 1Q '09.  That makes it easy to look at the next three calendar years for comparison.  From 1976-78, GNP growth averaged 5.5%; in 1983-85, 6.0%, now (with two quarters to go), 1.9%.  This is not how recessions are supposed to end. 

Even the mild recessions of the 1990s and early 2000s had better recoveries:  In 1992-94, annual growth averaged 3.8%; in 2003-05, 3.2%.

Btw, the cause of the financial collapse in 2008 was the housing bubble bursting.  And the cause of the housing bubble was government policies to "close the racial gap in home ownership".  Obama (1) supported these policies as a U.S. Senator, 2005-2008, and (2) has not ended them as president.

[kingthlayer]

This recession is fundamentally different from the 70s and 80s ones, because those were the results of  the cyclical business cycle. This was the result of a financial crisis, and financial crises almost always result in low growth recoveries.

[The Vorlon]

The rise of the internet helping the GOP? Dems usually enjoying a money advantage? Uh....

Actually, I said "internet and alternative media ".. which I do think is valid.

30 years ago there was the big networks and the newspapers which utterly dominated the flow of information... today there are a zillion sources...

The rise of "Talk Radio", as a classic example is clearly pretty darn helpful to the GOP.

The internet is, due to it's utter lack of centralization and control, a place where the GOP can compete.

For example, in 2004 when CBS and Dan Ra^ther fabricated a story about Bush and his ANG days, the GOP and conservatives had a method and a medium to fight back with... if the same thing had happened in 1964 the fabrication likely would have represented a successful attack.

With respect to the traditional Dem spending advantage, this is well documented.

If you take the true value of the literally tens of thousands of paid political operatives who are paid by the likes of the Teacher's Union, UAW, AFL-CIO and then "volunteer" for various democratic candidates (thus not counting as a campaign expenditure) the Dems have held a rather large advantage in actual campaign resources for many years.

The unlimited spending allowed by "Citizens United" is, if one steps back and looks at it objectively, a counterweight to the unlimited Union expenditures that have gone on for decades.

Some sort of sanity would be nice on the campaign spending side, but at least having, essentially, no rules is fair in the sense that there are, well, no rules.

[Senator Sbane]

After the Reagan Revolution of the early-80s, there were only two recessions an, d both were extraordinarily mild (the early 1990s and early 2000s).  That is why the Democrats think they can get away with claiming that the 2007-09 recession was "different, worse than every other recession".

Americans over 50 have an obligation to tell young people, that no, the recent recession was not substantially worse than either the 1973-75 or the 1980-82 ones.  The difference is that those recessions were followed by ROBUST recoveries.  GDP growth in 1976-78 averaged 5.5% and in 1983-85 averaged 6.0%.  Obama's GDP growth, 2010-12 (with two quarters left to go) has averaged a miserable 1.9%

1.) The early 90s recession started because of the end of the Cold War, which saw the demise of a lot of defense industry jobs. 90s prosperity was due to the computer revolution and the dot.com bubble.
2.) The dot.com bubble recession saw the demise of most dot.com companies, and was mainly a market recession, though unemployment breifly reached 6%. Unlike the 90s, wages and family income never increased all that much. Not to mention the housing bubble was in it's infancy, which helped the market a lot.
3.) This recession alomst saw the demise of AIG and major investment banks. Without the bailouts and federal takeovers, it would have been another depression. There's a reason people and economists called it the worse financial collapse since the Great Depression, and this was before Obama became president.

Please continue to spin though.

Since you didn't dispute anything I said, I'm not sure how to respond.

To "spin" again, I say that yes, the 2007-09 recession was long and deep -- but it was not substantially worse than either the 1973-75 or 1980-82 recessions.  The fact that there were (real and threatened) bank collapses in 2007-09 did not make it worse.  Anyway, the government has now given so much money to the banks that interest rates are, incredibly, going negative!  This is because so few Americans have the confidence to take out loans.

The fact is that all these recessions reached their deepest points in the first quarters of their last year -- in 1Q '75, 1Q '82, and 1Q '09.  That makes it easy to look at the next three calendar years for comparison.  From 1976-78, GNP growth averaged 5.5%; in 1983-85, 6.0%, now (with two quarters to go), 1.9%.  This is not how recessions are supposed to end. 

Even the mild recessions of the 1990s and early 2000s had better recoveries:  In 1992-94, annual growth averaged 3.8%; in 2003-05, 3.2%.

Btw, the cause of the financial collapse in 2008 was the housing bubble bursting.  And the cause of the housing bubble was government policies to "close the racial gap in home ownership".  Obama (1) supported these policies as a U.S. Senator, 2005-2008, and (2) has not ended them as president.

This is a recession caused by plummeting house prices which affected nearly every home owners wealth. This meant they started deleveraging by not taking on other loans and increasing their savings rate. This is not the same as other recessions. When people need to reduce their debt load, the recovery is meek like we have seen. Any economist will tell you a recovery after a housing crash is going to be slow.

[pbrower2a]

This recession is fundamentally different from the 70s and 80s ones, because those were the results of  the cyclical business cycle. This was the result of a financial crisis, and financial crises almost always result in low growth recoveries.

Right. The late 2007 - early 2009 meltdown looks much like (at least in severity and cause) to the first half of the late 1929 - late 1932 meltdown. America had been spared financial meltdowns because of Depression-era reforms that, so long as they were kept in place, prevented the corruption and recklessness that made possible the Great Stock Market Crash of 1929 and ensuing nastiness. Repeal of Glass-Steagall was a bad idea.  The 'Ownership Society' of Dubya proved a destructive hustle based on overpriced real estate and predatory lending.

Other downturns may be linked to the end of big construction projects such as giant bridges and dams. Such downturns allow recoveries in part from reduced costs of doing business and the eventual start of new such projects. The Golden Gate, Mackinac, and Verrazzano Bridges pay for themselves. The financial meltdown of 2007-2009 simply devoured capital with less-than-full compensation.

Lending at its best is in essence the recycling of capital with a little profit to the lender. The competent lender typically lends the proceeds of a successful loan as it is paid off to a new borrower. Meyer Rothschild established a wise principle: Never make a loan unless the loan is good for the borrower (typically for starting or enlarging a business). Such is not charity except by contrast to loan-shark activities that inevitably hurt the borrower. People doing well by borrowing to promote their own economic gain are good clients for repeated borrowings or become repositories of the capital for other loans.

A meltdown that destroyed the accumulation of roughly 15 years of capital formation will not be undone quickly. Anyone who expects otherwise is a visionary... fool.     

[The Vorlon]

This is a recession caused by plummeting house prices which affected nearly every home owners wealth. This meant they started deleveraging by not taking on other loans and increasing their savings rate. This is not the same as other recessions. When people need to reduce their debt load, the recovery is meek like we have seen. Any economist will tell you a recovery after a housing crash is going to be slow.

This recession is fundamentally different from the 70s and 80s ones, because those were the results of  the cyclical business cycle. This was the result of a financial crisis, and financial crises almost always result in low growth recoveries.

In some respects you are both talking about different manifestations of the same root cause - Government policy distorting the "true" value of a major element of the economy by way of assorted silly policies.

In the late 70s the substantial growth of the government, first with LBJ and the War + the "great society" then Nixon with the decoupling of the Dollar from Gold (I don't support tying the currency to Gold, but I do support anchoring it to "something" other than government whim and folly) then Carter with his insane energy policies (among other economic madneses) diluted and debased the currency while artificially driving many prices (primarily energy) upward. - After a while 10% inflation got "baked into the cake" and tainted any and all long term economic planning. - In some respects the 1980 era recession was "planned" in the sense the Volker and company judged that 20% interest rates were they only way to wring inflation out of the system.

The 2008 housing bubble also had at it's root silly government policy.  The demand for housing was artificially massively inflated by, essentially, mandating that Fanny and Ginny guarantee loans to people who in any remotely sane universe simply has no business buying a home.  

This broke the "iron law" of economics that requires that the entity making the profit from a loan also needs to take the hit if the loan goes bad. (This is the same reason why life insurance salesmen don't get to do their own underwriting) When banks and other institutions could make all the profit from a loan (the points, the fees, etc) and then shift the risk to the taxpayer....  well.... what ultimately happened was damn near inevitable.....  It would have been utterly astonishing if the market DIDN'T collapse.

My beef with Obama folks on housing is that they have slow walked the pain.

A house that sold for $400K that is now worth $200K means somewhere there is going to need to be $200K worth of pain.... the market and every sane economist and investor knows this, and until this pain is inflicted upon somebody, nobody will invest.  The "pain" is like winter snow in the mountains - it's gonna melt, the question is just when....

If you factor in inflation, interest rates are now negative.. what does that say?

The smart folks (the ones with trillions of dollars) have concluded that a negative rate of return is the best possible choice for their money right now.  Until that changes the chances of new factories, plants, businesses being created in adequate numbers is pretty much zero.

[Minnesota Mike]

So Obama jumped 5 points to 51% approval today (51-45). I actually think that is close to where we are at but the volatility is absurd.

[Tender Branson]

Obama takes first lead in 3 weeks @ Rasmussen today:

45-44 Obama

49-49 Approval (+2, -2)

Data for this update is conducted via nightly interviews and reported on a three-day rolling average basis.

As a result, just one-third of the interviews for today’s update were conducted following the Supreme Court ruling on the president’s health care law.

[Tender Branson]

Gallup is also moving slightly towards Obama today (but caution, it's a 7-day tracker):

48-43 Obama/Romney
47-46 Obama Approval

[Lief]

Clearly the SCOTUS ruling has doomed Obama.

[Senator Sbane]

Yeah, Obama's gonna lose by 20 points now.

[HagridOfTheDeep]

Obamacare ruling came out yesterday. Give it some time.

[Tender Branson]

Rasmussen:

50% Approve
49% Disapprove

46% Obama
44% Romney

The president is enjoying a modest bounce following the Supreme Court ruling on the health care law. This is the first time he has held the lead on consecutive days in more than a month.

Data for the tracking poll is based upon nightly interviews and reported on a three-day rolling average basis. As a result, just two-thirds of the interviews for today’s update were conducted following the Supreme Court ruling on the president’s health care law. Tomorrow will be the first update based entirely upon interviews conducted since that ruling.

[philly09]

Gallup

48 Approve

46 Disapprove

47/44 Obama/Romney

He's mirroring GWB's numbers.

Rassmussen

48 Approve

51 Disapprove

45/45 Obama/Romney

[SirNick]

There's a sudden lack of posts in here

[Tender Branson]

There's a sudden lack of posts in here

It's July 4 week. Almost no polls are released.

Besides, I expected this when I created this thread: That in the 2nd half of 2012, attention will move away from this thread and to the GE polls.

[J. J.]

Rasmussen Obama (National)

Approve 49%,-1.

Disapprove 50%, +1.

"Strongly Approve" is at 26%, -1.  "Strongly Disapprove" is at  40%, +1.

I'll try to get back to this, but I've had a busy month.

[HagridOfTheDeep]

Either way, your work is much appreciated.

[J. J.]

Rasmussen Obama (National)

Approve 47%,-2.

Disapprove 52%, +2.

"Strongly Approve" is at 27%, +1.  "Strongly Disapprove" is at  41%, +1.

Possibly just a bad sample dropping out, and not a sudden turning from Obama.

[J. J.]

Rasmussen Obama (National)

Approve 45%,-2.

Disapprove 53%, +1.

"Strongly Approve" is at 26%, -1.  "Strongly Disapprove" is at  44%, +3.

Either a bad sample has moved in or a bad sample dropped.

[J. J.]

Rasmussen Obama (National)

Approve 47%,+2.

Disapprove 52%, -1.

"Strongly Approve" is at 26%, +1.  "Strongly Disapprove" is at  44%, -3.

It looks like a really bad anti-Obama sample has dropped out.

[Iosif]

"Bad sample?"

"Good sample?"

"Good sample?"

"Bad sample?"

How we missed you JJ.