Last week it was reported that in a CBS News poll, 54 percent of voters did not think Barack Obama deserved to be reelected in 2012 based on his job performance to date.Today we see that confirmed with another poll, by a a new AP/GfK poll which finds that 52 percent of Americans "said that President Obama should be voted out of office," which for AP/GfK is a new high.
They also find that 54 percent of voters disapprove of the job Obama is doing as President with 44 percent approving.
What should be more troubling to the Obama reelection team isn't in the numbers themselves but in the pattern of his decline.
Those numbers are a sharp decline from May, when 53 percent said Obama should be reelected....
According to the AP article reporting on the poll, Obama's silver lining is followed by another black cloud.
Silver Lining- Obama's overall standing in the poll suggests he could be in jeopardy of losing re-election even as the survey showed that public's outlook on the economy appears to be improving. For the first time since spring, more people said the economy got better in the past month than said it got worse. The president's approval rating on unemployment shifted upward — from 40 percent in October to 45 percent in the latest poll — as the jobless rate fell to 8.6 percent last month, its lowest level since March 2009.
Black Cloud- But Obama's approval rating on his handling of the economy overall remains stagnant: Thirty-nine percent approve and 60 percent disapprove.
Other bad news for Obama is that his "signature" accomplishment, Obamacare, which was passed by the Democratically controlled House and Senate with Obama signing into law despite the opposition of the majority of Americans wishes, has reached the lowest level of support since it's passage, with only 29 percent supporting it and 49 percent opposing it.
Especially troubling for Democrats heading into an election year, is that the passion is also on the side of the opponents of the law. Just 13 percent consider themselves strong supporters, compared to 33 percent who say they "strongly oppose" the law.
As to the issue the Supreme Court recently agreed to hear, the individual mandate, the news gets worse for Obama and Democrats:
Even worse for Obama, just 15 percent of people said they think government should have the power to require individuals to purchase health insurance, compared to 84 percent who say they should not.
As I have stated before, I do not lend much credence to "head to head" match ups with Obama against individual GOP candidates because until one specific Republican is nominated to run against Obama in 2012, the party supporters have no one candidate to coalesce behind and actively promote.
I see no predictive value in the numbers until GOP supporters can unite behind the nominee as Democrats and liberals are already united behind Obama.
Since no specific candidate has been chosen yet, the number I am looking at is the Generic Presidential Ballot which Rasmussen shows a generic Republican is ahead of Obama by 5 percentage points, in December. Gallup has the GOP generic candidate up by 8 percentage points against Obama.
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