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President Obama’s job approval rating has hit a new low, even as Sarah Palin’s popularity appears to be on the rebound, new polls show. The latest USA Today/Gallup Poll puts Mr. Obama’s job approval rating at 47 percent, a new low for his 10-month administration. His job approval ratings rose briefly after last week’s announcement of a new policy in Afghanistan but then fell back in Dec. 4-6 polling, Gallup said. Gallup reported finding significant opposition both to Obama’s policies on healthcare reform and on Afghanistan. Strong partisan feelings The partisan split is deep and wide in Obama’s approval ratings....

In a hypothetical three-way contest, the latest Rasmussen national telephone survey found Democrats would attract 36 percent of the vote. A Tea Party candidate, if there were one, would attract 23 percent of the voters, while just 18 percent would be inclined to vote for a Republican candidate. However, 22 percent of the voters are undecided. In the survey of 1,000 likely voters, respondents were asked to assume that the Tea Party movement organized as a new political party. The survey was conducted Dec. 4-5. However, in a standard two-way race, Republicans hold a modest lead over Democrats. “It appears...

Gallup 47% to 46%

Two weeks ago, an Iowa poll showed Palin trailing Huckabee by just two points, 70% to 68%, in favorability ratings among Iowa Republicans. She easily outdistanced Mitt Romney, who garnered only 58 percent. Despite a media onslaught attempting to spin the Clemmons story, Huckabee's credibility has taken a serious hit. Even those who boosted him to victory in the 2008 Iowa Caucus are questioning the former Arkansas governor's judgment.

PROVO, Utah -- Significant misperceptions shape the LDS church's image and standing in America, said a church apostle Friday. Speaking during Women's Conference at Brigham Young University, Elder L. Tom Perry of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' Quorum of the Twelve, asked more than 16,000 women gathered in the BYU Marriott Center to dedicate themselves to strengthening the image of the church. SNIP Offering the conference's closing general address, Elder Perry said that church leaders have been looking at the church's image to better understand how the organization approaches its missionary efforts. "We have employed some professional...

The Birther movement is convinced that President Obama is not a natural-born citizen and hence is constitutionally prohibited from being President. Most Birthers claim that Obama was born in Kenya, while others think his birth occurred in Indonesia. Even though Obama has released a copy of his birth certificate showing that he was born on Oahu, these conspiracy theories continue to animate the fanatical right. What is most surprising about these conspiracy theories is the number of relatively mainstream people willing to associate themselves with the Birthers or at least recognize the issue as a legitimate controversy. One of CNN’s...

Campaigning is not being President...

There's a new picture of President Obama that's sticking in my mind like a song that keeps playing in my head (the one that kept playing for me last week was "Empire State of Mind," especially the lines by Alicia Keys). In this mental picture of Obama, he's crunched down in a tiny cockpit and wearing oversized kamikaze goggles. His plane is completely coming apart, pieces flying off in all directions, and he's stepping on the gas, that big million-dollar smile fixed on his face like there's nothing wrong. That picture popped into my mind when the latest survey from...

While 170 or more voters might have been fooled in the 2009 Values Voter Summit straw poll, it wasn’t Mike Huckabee who came out on top in a recent Washington Post poll of the leader who best reflects GOP values. From CNN: According to the poll, 18 percent of Republicans and independents who lean towards the GOP say the former Alaska governor best reflects core GOP values. In second place, 5 points back, is Sen. John McCain of Arizona, last year’s Republican presidential nominee, followed by former Arkansas governor and 2008 presidential candidate Mike Huckabee at 7 percent, former Massachusetts...

Seventy-one percent (71%) of voters nationwide say they’re at least somewhat angry about the current policies of the federal government. That figure includes 46% who are Very Angry. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that only 27% are not angry about the government's policies, including 10% who are Not at All Angry........ The data suggests that the level of anger is growing. The 71% who are angry at federal government policies today is up five percentage points since September. Even more stunning, the 46% who are Very Angry is up 10 percentage points from September.

With the approval numbers for President Barack Obama continuing to drop and the numbers for former Republican Vice Presidential candidate experiencing an upward trend, both political players have shown a lot can happen in a year. This time last year, Mrs. Palin was the scourge of the media and political establishment. Berated by the likes of Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann, mocked by Saturday Night Live and abandoned by her running mate, Mrs. Palin was left to fend for herself in a landscape that claimed the careers of many conservatives before her. Mr. Obama, on the other hand, was the...

Democrats in Congress may need redemption with voters next year. But can President Obama save them? Some strategists believe replicating the model that produced Democratic gains in the past two election cycles--a combination of mobilizing new voters and independents, along with an energized party base--is the answer. Victories over the past four years even convinced some an enduring Democratic majority had emerged. President Obama's 2008 win only punctuated that ascendancy. Others believe dancing on the Republicans' grave is premature. Sinking the GOP was an easy target when the party had controlled the White House since 2001. Republican unpopularity--in an environment...

Sarah Palin 2012 Presidential Betting Odds: Former Vice Presidential candidate, Sarah Palin is making headlines once again this week with the release of her already best-selling memoir “Going Rogue”, as well as much speculation that she might be the next G.O.P entrant in the upcoming 2012 Presidential Betting Odds elections. With the current state the country finds itself in and with so many Americans in disapproval of the job current President Barack H. Obama is doing, the Sarah Palin camp might be gearing up to give the leftist a run for their money in the 2012 Presidential Betting Odds. But...

Voters are a bit less inclined this month to blame President Obama’s policies for the country’s current economic problems. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 50% of U.S. voters now say the problems are due to the recession which began under the Bush administration. Forty-two percent (42%) blame Obama’s policies, and eight percent (8%) are not sure.

It’s not too early, apparently, to test opinion on the 2012 presidential race. Pollster Scott Rasmussen has asked likely voters to decide between Barack Obama and three reasonably well-known Republicans, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin. He also asked about their preferences in three-way pairings between those candidates and recently-resigned CNN commentator Lou Dobbs. There are three interesting findings. Number one. Obama is essentially tied with all three Republicans, leading Huckabee 45%-41% and Palin 46%-43% and even with Romney at 44%-44%. In other words, Obama is running at his job approval ratinRg level, which Rasmussen has at 46%-54%. This...

President Obama's job approval ratings are below 50 percent or in negative territory in five of the seven states we are updating in our round-up of state polls (one of the new polls, for Texas, did not test job approval ratings, but instead asked about the impact of Obama's economic stimulus package and his health care proposal). The other updated states are Arizona, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina and Wisconsin. Tom Jensen of Public Policy Polling, which did some of the new surveys cited here, observes: "Obama generally seems to be having problems in the Midwest. A Des Moines Register...

Cannot be posted due to copyright issues: http://www.detnews.com/article/20091126/OPINION03/911260330/Pay-attention-to-Palin-s-backers

A blog entry posted at CQPolitics.com looked at a recent Rasmussen Reports poll and another by the Kaiser Family Foundation and concluded that the “new polls disagree on whether a government overhaul of the nation's health care system will leave people better off or worse off.” In fact, according to the posting, the results were dramatically different with the Rasmussen poll showing that people think the system would be worse by a 54% to 20% margin “while the Kaiser poll says the country as a whole would do better, 54 percent to 27 percent.” The post concluded that the polls...

Republicans have extended their lead in the generic Congressional ballot to their highest level of the year, according to the latest Rasmussen survey of likely voters. The overall Republican rating has not gone beyond their year-long high of 44%, but Democrats continue to decline. Only 37% would vote for a Democrat, giving the GOP a seven-point lead with a year to go before the midterms: Republican candidates have extended their lead over Democrats to seven points, their biggest lead since early September, in the latest edition of the Generic Congressional Ballot. And the news gets even worse for Obama among...

In what could be one of the most hotly contested Senate races in 2010, former New York City Mayor and failed Presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani is in a statistical dead heat with New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a new Zogby IVR poll finds. Forty-five percent prefer Giuliani and 43% side with the incumbent Gillibrand, well within the poll's 3.2% margin of error. 'IVR' or Interactive Voice Response is a polling methodology that uses a recorded human voice to administer a survey to participants who respond via a telephone touchpad. In another potential match-up Senator Gillibrand holds a slight lead over...

Some great numbers to head into the Thanksgiving holiday from Scott Rasmussen. Rasmussen has released some numbers for the 2012 Presidential Election with the usual Republican suspects.

Pro-Darwin consensus doesn't rule out intelligent design --snip-- (CNN) -- While we officially celebrate the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" on November 24, celebrations of Darwin's legacy have actually been building in intensity for several years. Darwin is not just an important 19th century scientific thinker. Increasingly, he is a cultural icon. Darwin is the subject of adulation that teeters on the edge of hero worship, expressed in everything from scholarly seminars and lecture series to best-selling new atheist tracts like those by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. The atheists claim that...

Obama hits a rough spot Published: 25/11/2009 at 12:00 AM Newspaper section: News President Barack Obama of the United States has hit the one-year political wall hard, and it especially showed during his recent trip to Asia. In the year since Mr Obama was elected, both the excitement of the polls and the expectations have worn off. As with all democratic leaders, election hullabaloo has been replaced by reality. Not all promises can be achieved quickly, or in the way they were presented in a free-wheeling election. In some ways, Mr Obama has been brought down to Earth, and his...

"Like it or not, if Sarah Palin decides to seek our nation's highest office, she has a shot," Matthew Dowd, the chief strategist for the Bush/Cheney '04 campaign, writes in today's Washington Post, before offering Palin a list of advice on how to get there. Dowd draws a parallel between Palin and Obama, in that each are beloved by members of their own party, and not liked so much by members of the other: Polls show that Palin's favorability numbers are a mirror image of those of Obama. She is respected and loved by the Republican base, while Democrats despise...

Not that it matters politically because obviously she's a female Republican dunce and he's obviously a male Democratic genius. But Sarah Palin's poll numbers are strengthening. And President Obama's are sliding. Guess what? They're about to meet in the 40s. Depending, of course, on which recent set of numbers you peruse and how the questions are phrased, 307 days into his allotted 1,461 the 44th president's approval rating among Americans has slid to 49% or 48%, showing no popularity bounce from his many happy trips, foreign and domestic. Riding the wave of immense publicity and symbiotic media interest over her...

Frum points to the polls: I was interviewed on PBS last week about Palin’s book release. I said that Palin had an especially serious problem with women voters. This is just fact, again recorded in every survey...And yet this attested statistical fact is shrugged off with comments like, “when I saw her campaign in N.H., I was surrounded by moms with strollers”(continued)

With her popularity on the rise and a number one book, Sarah Palin is coming out on top! As the L.A. Times points out, at this point in time before the 2008 election, Barack Obama was a relative unknown who rose to political fame. Given the same timeframe -- and her fanitical supporters snapping up 300,000 copies of her book in a single day -- could she be headed towards the White House? Could Palin take down President Obama in 2012? Give us your thoughts in the comments below, then take our poll to tell us: What side are you...

Not even Gallup can help boost The Ones numbers. DeMint was right, Health Care will be his Waterloo.

The conventional wisdom on Sarah Palin is that she's a divisive figure, and, from what polls tell us, that's true: according to Pollster.com's average, 38 percent of Americans hold a favorable view of her, while 49.2 percent view her unfavorably. So she's in minus territory--11.2 percent more Americans view her negatively than positively--which is bad for any politician running for office (if indeed she is). That's worse than other top-tier 2012 contenders, too, whose favorable/unfavorable splits, according to the same average, are 36.9 / 27.3 for Mitt Romney and 44.6 / 23/9 for Mike Huckabee. But among Republicans, she does...

Obama’s overall job approval slipped to 49 percent from 53percent in September. Iowans’ approval is down 19 percentage points since an Iowa Poll in January, about the time he was inaugurated. A majority of Iowans now say the Democrat’s performance in key economic areas is inadequate, including health care, his top domestic priority… Fifty-five percent of Iowans disapprove of how Obama is handling health care, up from not quite half in September.

At first, Matthew Hoh didn’t think he was doing anything that consequential — maybe he’d attract some attention for the first day or two before becoming, as he puts it, a “footnote.” But since news broke, a little less than a month ago, of his resignation from the State Department over the US war in Afghanistan — he is the first US official to publicly quit in protest — Hoh has swiftly become an influential voice, both within and outside the government. The timing of his resignation, dated Sept. 10, 2009, was fortuitous, he says: “People want to understand this.”...

[V]oters have consistently believed that tax cuts would do more than increased government spending to stimulate the economy and create jobs. Now that the nation’s unemployment rate has reached 10.2%, voters continue to hold that view. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 62% believe tax cuts are a better way to create jobs and fight unemployment. Only 21% believe that additional stimulus spending is a more effective tool. Earlier this year, as the first stimulus package was being debated in Congress, 62% of voters wanted the plan to have more tax cuts and less spending. Given a...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: The Gallup poll will announce -- they effectively have announced it -- the Gallup poll will announce that for the first time in their poll Barack Obama's approval rating has fallen below 50%. In fact, a little story about this. This from Ben Smith at The Politico: "His approval numbers have bounced down to the 50% mark several times, driven by weaker support from independents and Republicans, but hadn't crossed it. The slide is worrying for the White House, but it's probably not yet panic time. Ronald Reagan's approval numbers dropped well below 40% during the depths...

When it comes to paying for a health care overhaul, Americans see just one way to go: Tax the rich. That finding from a new Associated Press poll will be welcome news for House Democrats, who proposed doing just that in their sweeping remake of the U.S. medical system, which passed earlier this month and would extend coverage to millions of uninsured Americans. The poll found participants sour on other ways of paying for the health overhaul that is being considered in Congress, including taxing insurers on high-value coverage packages derided by President Barack Obama and Democrats as "Cadillac plans."...

No force on Earth can stop Sarah Palin from becoming our very own "lite" version of Eva Perón -- a glamorous and tragic legend, minus the tragedy. Eventually, some clever composer will write a blockbuster musical about her life and times. Stage directions will include: "SARAH fires gun. MOOSE dies." It's futile to try to ignore Palin, however noble the effort may be. She's a phenomenon, and it hardly matters that so many people believe she augurs the final dissolution of American politics into a big, frothy bowl of mush. The republic will survive even her. Anyway, she's unlikely ever...

After the New England Patriots disasterous decision Sunday night not to punt on fourth down with the ball on the Indianapolis Colts' 28-yard line, former Massachusetts Governor, Mitt Romney, had every right to be ticked off. Especially considering that the Pats had the lead with little more than 2 minutes left in the game. Is it possible that the team's supposedly brilliant coach, Bill Belichick, got confused and thought the Manning brother waiting patiently on the opposing sidelines was Eli and not Peyton? Whatever the case, the Colts went on to win the game with 13 seconds left in the...

The self-described 'rogue' is anathema to the party establishment but manna from heaven to the grass roots. In a Republican Party hoping to rebound in 2010 on the strength of a newly energized and ideologically aroused conservative grass roots, Sarah Palin's influence is now unparalleled. She was the one who popularized the notion that Democrats advocated "death panels" as part of their healthcare plan, a charge that helped ignite conservative opposition to reform. More recently, in a special congressional election in upstate New York, Palin's endorsement of Doug Hoffman, an unknown, far-right third-party candidate, helped force a popular moderate Republican...

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Saturday shows that 29% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-eight percent (38%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -9...

This week, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Florida Democrat, told reporters the GOP offers a "back-of-the-hand treatment to women." Later she said two conservative female representatives only serve to further "repulse women." You see, Schultz said on MSNBC, Republicans "don't really get very many women when it comes to elections." The week before, in Virginia, the Republican gubernatorial candidate won women. And in blue New Jersey, the Republican lost women but won white women by 18 percentage points. Last year, John McCain won a majority of the white female vote. They sum to more than 25 million women. Democrats, so...

The results of races for the governorship of Virginia and New Jersey were ominous for Democrats. The most alarming development for them should be that independents voted for the GOP candidates by roughly a 2-to-1 margin. This was a sea change, and it took place in only a year. There are several reasons Democrats are faltering at this juncture. But one explanation, I think, is more relevant than all others: President Obama is pushing a hugely expensive and ambitious domestic agenda the public simply does not want. Many Americans also believe that what Obama is doing is a diversion from...

A new poll by AP-GfK has Obama’s approval rating at 54 percent. I reported a few weeks back on how the poll might be engineered to favor Obama. Today, I have some shocking news as to how the AP-GfK poll was framed when Bush was president. With regard to the new Obama poll, the question immediately preceding Obama’s approval question reads as follows: When you think about how things are going in your life in general, would you say you are very happy, somewhat happy, neither happy nor unhappy, somewhat unhappy, or very unhappy? The results from that question: “Total...

The victories by Republicans in two Governors races last Tuesday appear to have lifted the party's prospects in 2010 and in 2012 in the minds of voters with 58% of those surveyed by Rasmussen now believe the next President will be Republican Both Gallup and Rasmussen now show solid leads for the GOP in the generic Congressional ballot for 2010 - 4% in Gallup and 6% in Rasmussen. For Gallup, this is a 6% shift in one month, and a 10% shift in two months away from the Democrats. Nate Silver show more Democratic held Senate seats at risk in...

Dan Calabrese notices a scolding tone coming from the Associated Press in reporting its latest polling. It headlines the report by noting that “a grouchy public [is] sticking with Obama,” having seen a 54% job approval rating in its survey — but some bad numbers on the issues. Does the AP report those falling levels of support as a consequence of Barack Obama doing a poor job? No, as emphases from Dan and myself show: The public grew slightly more dispirited on a range of matters over the past month, including war and the economy, continuing the slippage that has...

Matthew Continetti has a piece in this weekend’s Weekly Standard hailing Sarah Palin as the ideal leader of a new populist uprising. One obvious objection to his thesis: The populist Sarah is in fact one of the most unpopular figures in American life. According to Gallup, 63% of Americans say they would never consider voting for her. By a margin of 62%-31% Americans rate Palin “unqualified” to serve as president – by far the worst score for any leading Republican. In comparison, only 51% of Americans say they would never consider voting for Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee – and...

NPR is wringing its hands . . . with good reason. Let's look at their list of Senate races and see how much good news is there for the Dems. Democratic leader Harry Reid is woefully unpopular in Nevada. Six Republicans are competing for the chance to topple him the way GOP Sen. John Thune of South Dakota did to then-Democratic leader Tom Daschle in 2004. RCP has both Republicans Lowden and Tarkanian beating Reid. Let's keep track. So far we are R-1, D-0.

LINKNot too hard to figure out, folks!

Psst. Don't tell anybody, but Republicans would win control of Congress if the election were now, instead of next year. It's sure to remain the biggest political secret not in the news. Naturally, the media will ignore it; the polling company that produced the survey, Gallup, even buried it under a misleading headline. Maybe, to get some coverage, the Republicans could claim to have hidden somebody in a weather balloon, or something. The congressional election prediction is part of a one-two punch Gallup delivered Barack Obama's Chicago mob on Tuesday, albeit reluctantly.

Americans are a little less enthusiastic about the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama this time around. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 45% of adults say they would be at least somewhat likely to vote for Obama if he was up for reelection right now. Forty-nine percent (49%) say they would be unlikely to vote for the president’s reelection. Thirty-four percent (34%) would be very likely to support Obama, while 40% say they would be not at all likely to do so. The question did not specify whom the president would be running against and also was...

President Obama's overall approval rating is still at a healthy 54 percent, but a new poll suggests some weakness on major issues. The CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released this morning shows his approval rating down from 58 percent in the same poll in mid-September. More worrisome for the White House, the poll numbers have flipped from majority approval to majority disapproval on the economy (54 percent disapproval now, 54 percent approval in September), health care policy (57 percent disapproval now, 51 percent approval then), and the war in Afghanistan (56 percent disapproval now, 49 percent approval in August.)

It has been one year since The One became our president. Most polls today put his approval rating right about at his margin of victory of a year ago. But when people are asked about his policies, rather than his personality, well, even CNN can't spin these numbers.