Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine said Wednesday that President Obama remains popular among voters, including independents, despite his party’s gubernatorial losses in Tuesday’s elections and polls showing a sharp decline in his job approval ratings.
Mr. Kaine told reporters at a postelection press conference that the president “really retains a strong popularity among the voters” and continues to have even stronger support among independent voters than he has in the past.
But the latest Gallup poll shows that Mr. Obama’s job approval scores have fallen to 50 percent, down from a 52-week high of 69 percent and that his overall popularity or voter approval grade has dropped to 55 percent from 78 percent in January. Only 31 percent of Americans now think he will be able to keep his promises to rein in federal spending, down from 52 percent a year ago, Gallup said.
“After a strong start, Obama’s approval ratings have slumped, though they remain at or above 50 percent,” Gallup said Wednesday in an analysis of the nation’s political climate in the 2010 election cycle that it said was “shaping up to be not as favorable to the Democratic Party as the 2006 and 2008 elections were.”
Gallup, and other pollsters, found that independents made up a significant share of the voters who disapprove of the job he is doing, and election analysts have been saying for weeks that these unaffiliated swing voters have been moving to the Republicans in large numbers, tightening the spread between Republicans and Democrats in party preference polls.
Gallup said 48 percent of Americans surveyed said they identified with or leaned toward the Democrats and 42 percent identified with or leaned toward the Republicans in the third quarter. Rasmussen said Tuesday that its latest survey showed 42 percent would vote Republican in the congressional elections and 38 percent favored Democrats.
Exit polls of voters in Tuesday’s Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial elections reported that nearly a third of the voters described themselves as independents and they voted Republican by almost 2 to 1.
Independents were a pivotal part of Mr. Obama’s 2008 victory across the country, but the Associated Press noted Tuesday that “after more than a year of recession, they fled from Democrats” in both states.
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters Wednesday that voters who went to the polls in Virginia and New Jersey were concerned with “very local issues that didn’t involve the president.”
But in Virginia, exit polling at voting places found that more than four in 10 voters said their views about Mr. Obama influenced their vote, and the Associated Press said, “Those voters roughly split between expressing support and opposition for the president.”
A USA Today/Gallup survey conducted Oct. 16-29 said, “A majority of Americans now see President Obama as governing from the left. Specifically, 54 percent say his policies as president have been mostly liberal while 34 percent call them mostly moderate. This contrasts with public expectations right after Obama’s election a year ago, when as many expected him to be moderate as to be liberal.”
The poll’s finding “offers several indications that Obama’s public image has changed since his election last November. Much of that change is inauspicious for Obama,” said Gallup analyst Lydia Saad.
The poll also found a sharp drop in the percentage of Americans since April who say Mr. Obama has kept his campaign promises, declining from 92 percent to 77 percent among Democrats, 54 percent to 41 percent among independents, and 45 percent to 22 percent among Republicans, Gallup said.
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