President Obama has seen some hits to his national approval rating over the last few weeks as residue from the bruising debt debate, although Congress is even worse off since the almost-default. But new data from Gallup released on Monday shows a much more coherent and specific picture of Obama’s job approval as he ramps up his 2012 election campaign, and how his approval rating looks when set against the modern electoral map.
The data, taken from Gallup’s polling from January 2011 to June of this year, charts the president’s rating in all 50 states, using interviews with more than 90,000 American adults. While his national approval rating for this time period in the Gallup tracking poll is below 50%, the map shows an improving picture after the GOP victories of 2010, and much of that improvement in swing states.
The president did receive a 50% or higher approval rating in a few more states during the first half of 2011 than he did in 2010 — 16 compared with 12, along with the District of Columbia in both time periods. His approval rating crept back to the 50% level in Maine, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota in the first part of 2011 after being below that level in those states in 2010.
Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. Three states that the President almost certainly needs to win to make the electoral math work. Some other crucial states just below the fifty percent mark: Iowa at 49%, Pennsylvania at 48%, Florida at 47%, and southern Democratic beachheads Virginia and North Carolina are at 46%.
There were also some trouble spots for the President. In Oregon, a state that has gone Democratic since 1992, Obama only notched 44% approval. He scored the same in Colorado and Nevada, states that Obama flipped from the 2004 election, and 46% in New Mexico, a state Obama was able to win in 2008 and Al Gore took in 2000.
The sample sizes for individual states are available here. Gallup describes the margin of error for individual state polls as mostly plus or minus four percent.
Kyle Leighton
Kyle is the Poll Editor at TPM. He graduated from Beloit College (WI) and began working in politics before getting an M.A. in magazine journalism from New York University, where he interned at TPM and the website of The New Yorker.
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