Quite a bit of polling news today starting with a NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, via MSNBC, which shows Barack Obama is at the lowest point of his presidency where he has dropped 3 points since July on his overall approval rating putting it at 44 percent, his handling of the economy earns him only a 37 percent approval and 19 percent believe the country is on the right track.Perhaps most ominously for Obama, a majority of poll takers — 54 percent — think he's facing a longer-term setback from which he's unlikely to recover. Back in January, just 39 percent agreed with that assessment.
Full poll results found here.(PDF)
That poll is followed up with a a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, to which Wapo headlines their article about it with "Obama ratings sink to new lows as hope fades."
More than 60 percent of those surveyed say they disapprove of the way the president is handling the economy and, what has become issue No. 1, the stagnant jobs situation. Just 43 percent now approve of the job he is doing overall, a new career low; 53 percent disapprove, a new high.
Another poll shows that Obama's economic messaging is not resonating well in the very blue state of California which is suffering from 12 percent unemployment and while the USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll which finds that "many would rather adhere to party orthodoxy than compromise to address the current economic problems," yet the plurality of respondents, 49 percent, agree with Republicans that slashing government spending to restrain the deficit will better lead to prosperity instead of Obama/Democrat's message for strategic government investments to stimulate the economy where only 37 percent side with them.
"The argument of 'We need to cut the size of government, we need to reduce the deficit' has won, even in California," said David Kanevsky, research director for American Viewpoint, a Republican firm that co-directed the bipartisan poll. "Stimulus is almost a four-letter word here."
With California unemployment mired at 12%, the electorate is clearly dissatisfied with the status quo. Nearly 3 in 4 voters say the country is on the wrong track, up sharply from the 55% who felt that way in November 2009.
Perhaps that is why Democrats have dropped the word "stimulus" almost entirely from their vocabulary as The Hill reports.
Democrats are now being careful to frame their job-creation agenda in language excluding references to any stimulus, even though their favored policies for ending the deepest recession since the Great Depression are largely the same.
Obama's much talked about upcoming jobs speech will undoubtedly also exclude the word "stimulus" and instead people will hear the word "investment" to mean more spending and stimulus.
Gallup finds that since Obama's signature legislation dubbed Obamacare was passed, the number of uninsured people has increased, not decreased.
CNN reports on a different set of polls showing that Rick Perry has widened his lead in the GOP field of candidates for the presidential election of 2012.
The Politico/George Washington University Battleground Poll has Perry atop the field with 36 percent, followed by former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney at 17 percent and Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann and Texas Rep. Ron Paul tied at 10 percent.
The NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll delivered similar results. Perry is 38 percent of respondent's first choice for the nomination, followed by Romney at 23 percent, Paul at 9 percent and Bachmann at 8 percent.
Last but not least, Rasmussen just released their Generic Presidential Ballot which shows that a generic Republican candidate gets 49 percent support while Obama only receives 41 percent.
Attaching the name of the GOP front runner, Rick Perry, to that question, Perry leads Obama with 44 percent to Obama's 41 percent.
The polling news today is quite ominous for Obama's reelection chances in 2012 and while polls are a wonderful way to track patterns and trends, they are still just a snapshot into the minds of Americans at any given time.
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