Interesting Polling on Obama's First Month

[Pangloss]

Couple interesting polls out, showing mixed results for the new administration. In general his approval rating remains very high, as is perhaps to be expected given the short time frame, but he's clearly having difficulty conveying certain aspects of "change".

 

Republicans are being hammered over the issue of who's compromising and who is not. This is not surprising, though, and actually more or less part of the Republican game plan at the moment -- taking an obvious hit now, while they're already down, in exchange for a potential payoff down the road if Obama's economic plan fails.

 

And nearly 75 percent said Obama is trying to reach across the partisan gulf, while nearly 60 percent said Republicans are not returning his overtures.

 

One interesting thing that's come up is a sharp contrast between the results of the Rasmussen poll and the ABC poll over the same issue.

 

Last week a Rasmussen poll showed that only 38 percent of Americans support Obama's mortgage plan, but a new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that 64 percent of Americans somewhat or strongly support Obama's plan.

 

Interesting! The blurb above from The Weekly Standard goes on to show why this might be -- apparently the poll questions were very different. The ABC poll asked whether respondents support the government assisting homeowners in avoiding foreclosure, whereas the Rasmussen poll asked whether the government should subsidize financially troubled homeowners.

 

Some might view that as slanted polling banging off uneducated proles, but I actually look at it the opposite way -- people are smarter than pollsters give them credit for, and are actually trying to express a deeper understanding of the problem than the poll allows them to do. Put another way, respondents are sympathetic with struggling homeowners and willing to help them to SOME degree, but are upset with the large degree being undertaken by the government and the vast amount of money it's going to cost them over the long run, when 90% of them have done nothing wrong.

 

But either way it does seem to point to the fact that these are major changes. On the other hand, they're not permanent ideological shifts, they're temporary economic measures, and these poll suggest that Obama will only lose support if the program fails, not before. No buyer's remorse just yet -- it has to fail first. Seems fair enough to me, though it certainly won't appease the ideologues -- if anything making them even more unhappy, since they think people should do what they say regardless of outcomes.

 

What do you all think?

 

http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/seattlepolitics/archives/162651.asp

http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2009/02/two_polls_on_obamas_mortgage_p.asp

[ecoli]

I agree... those polls are asking two very different questions.