Different questions and a lot of these polls just generate noise because of it. Remember all the people worried about food with DNA in it or dihydrogen oxide or women’s suffrage?
What was confusing me about Wyatt's post was he was talking about econ optimism and I'd been looking at O's approvals. If I understand this correctly what's happening is that the America's happy about earning a living in spite of O. The WSJ/NBC econ poll of 800 people came about not that far from Gallup's 4000.