Quinnipiac University provides the latest numbers and they continue to move downward after a slight reprieve from the midterm elections.American voters disapprove 48 - 42 percent of the job President Barack Obama is doing and say 50 - 41 percent he does not deserve to be re-elected in 2012, both all-time lows, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.
This compares to a 46 - 46 percent job approval rating and a 45 - 47 percent split on the President's re-election in a March 3 survey by the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University. In a hypothetical 2012 matchup, President Obama gets 36 percent of the vote to 37 percent for an unnamed Republican challenger.
Democrats approve 80 - 13 percent of the job Obama is doing, but disapproval is 81 - 9 percent among Republicans and 50 - 39 percent among independent voters. Men disapprove 52 - 41 percent while women split 44 - 44 percent.
Quinnipiac isn't the only polling organization providing numbers that should disturb Barack Obama either.
Gallup provides it's own set of figures and while the numbers do not appear as bad as Quinnipiac's did, the pattern Gallup shows is probably even worse news for Obama than what is shown above.
Americans have grown increasingly less likely to view President Obama as a strong and decisive leader since he took office. Roughly half now believe this aptly describes, him compared with 60% a year ago and 73% in April 2009.
When the trend is looked at by Gallup, this is what they find:
Altogether, Obama's ratings on being a strong and decisive leader are down a total of 21 percentage points since taking office, compared with a 15-point decline on understanding Americans' daily problems and a 9-point decline in sharing their values. Obama's overall job approval rating declined 16 points over the same time period.
I've often said that polls change on a dime, they bounce as the news cycle runs from story to story, they drop just as easily and fast, but polls are excellent indicators of patterns and trends and the patterns being seen for Barack Obama canot be spun in any favorable light.
The longer he is president, with each and every crisis, every political showdown, every foreign policy decision, Obama continues to drop in each important category among all demographics and while the drop in numbers from his Democratic supporters are smaller than the drop among Independents and Republicans, the drop is still there and continuing to spiral downward.
Today the media will claim the recent drop stems from Obama's decisions on Libya, before that it was his handling of the budget, before that the tax issue, etc....
Media will always provide an easy scapegoat and excuses for the bad polling numbers of the moment, but rarely do they address the pattern being seen and what it means to Obama's reelection chances as well the overall discontent American voters are beginning to express about Barack Obama.
Patterns don't lie and these patterns leave the door wide open for a strong GOP presidential candidate to win in the 2012 presidential election and make Obama a one term president.
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