Gallup’s latest Presidential tracking poll finds that only 41% of Americans approve of the job Obama is doing. A solid majority, 53%, disapprove of the job he is doing. Obama’s poll numbers are approaching the lowest of his Presidency, reached in October 2011, in the aftermath of the last debt ceiling debate. Gallup’s latest numbers also show a dramatic drop in Obama’s approval since immediately before the partial government shutdown.
Obama’s lowest approval ratings in the Gallup survey were in October, 2011. Just 38% of Americans approved of his job performance, while 54% disapproved. The results reported Monday are well within the poll’s margin of error of that low.
At the end of September, on the eve of the government shutdown and launch of ObamaCare, 44% of Americans approved of Obama’s job performance, while 48% disapproved. Gallup’s latest poll finds an 8-point swing against Obama since the start of the partial government shutdown.
The conventional wisdom in DC and across the media is that the current fiscal stand-off hurts Republicans exclusively. Unfortunately, many Republican lawmakers seem to believe this as well. This belief prompted them last week to offer major concessions to end the fiscal stalemate.
Obama rejected those offers, preferring to leave the threat of possible default on the table to extract more concessions. The Gallup poll, however, shows that this strategy is risky for Obama. If the stand-off exclusively hurt Republicans, one would have expected Obama’s numbers to rise in the wake of the partial government shutdown.
That clearly isn’t the case today.
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