It’s been a tough month for Washington’s approval ratings, as Congress has hit new lows and general economic confidence sank. President Obama is also being dragged down, not only because of partisan bickering over the debt deal, but because of a stagnant and volatile economy, which was one of the President’s strongest issues when he came into office. Now Obama has hit a new low in the Gallup tracking poll at 38 percent approval.
Even though there is no lack of bad news, Obama is still far away from President Bush’s low, which was 25 percent. The current President has had strong staying power in his approval rating, despite bruising legislative battles with Congress and the continuation of global conflicts: as the graph below shows, it has remained around the 50 percent mark.
The latest Gallup match-ups against GOP contenters didn’t show rock solid support for the President either, as Obama was found to be in a statistical dead heat with Tex. Gov. Rick Perry, Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX).
The current TPM Poll Average shows the President with an approval raiting of 42.2 percent, with 52.8 percent disapproval.
The Gallup tracking poll uses live telephone interviews with 1,500 American adults over the last three days, and has a margin of error of plus or minus three percent.
Kyle Leighton
Kyle is the Editor of TPM Media’s PollTracker. 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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