At the end of the piece highlighting the portion of the poll dealing with the Republican presidential candidates, they point out that there is a reversal in enthusiasm from 2007 until now.
Looking ahead to the general election, 31 percent of registered voters nationwide say they are more enthusiastic about the 2012 presidential election compared to past elections (18 percent are less enthusiastic and 50 percent say they have the same level of enthusiasm). This level of enthusiasm is similar to what it was in the fall of 2007.
But there is an 18 point partisan enthusiasm gap that currently favors Republicans: 44 percent of Republican voters are more enthusiastic about voting in 2012, while just 26 percent of Democrats are. This is a reversal compared to October, 2007, when twice as many Democrats as Republicans expressed more enthusiasm about voting.
Republicans are also more likely than Democrats to be tuned into the 2012 campaign - 77 percent of Republicans are paying at least some attention (including more than a third who are paying a lot of attention), compared to 61 percent of Democrats. But it's still early in the campaign cycle, and only 30 percent of voters overall are paying a lot of attention to the 2012 election campaign so far
This is similar to the 20 point lead Republicans had over Democrats in October of 2010 in enthusiasm heading into the 2010 midterms where Republicans won the largest turnover of House seats in over 70 years and saw a net gain in the Senate.
Another CBS News article announces that Obama's approval rating drops to all-time low, where they show that according to their previous polling compared with the Friday's poll, Obama is down to 43 percent and his disapproval rating is up to 50 percent, which is the lowest approval CBS polling has found.
That 43 percent approval seems to be the average according to RCP averages which uses multiple polls from a variety of organizations. Gallup has Obama down to 39 percent approval, matching their all time lows and Reuters has him at 47 percent approval.
The actual numbers vary from polling organization to organization depending on a number of issues which could include the number of respondents, how the question is asked, whether it is all Americans, registered voters or likely voters, phone polling vs land line, etc.... but the one thing almost all the polling organizations do show is a pattern of Obama trending downward.
Other findings include but are not limited to;
• 39 percent of Americans say the economy is fairly bad, and another 47 percent say the economy is very bad
• 72 percent of Americans think the country is on the wrong track
• 57 percent disapprove of the way he has handled the economy
• 68 percent saying they do not think Obama has made real progress fixing the economy
• 39 percent have a favorable opinion of Obama, while 42 percent view him unfavorably
PDF's of poll data embedded below, via CBS News.
CBSNYTPoll Obama Economy 091611
Cbsnytpoll Gop 091611
