OBAMA’S NUMBERS
NBC News/Wall Street Journal polls showing President Barack Obama’s positive and negative ratings for October in each year since he took office.
Positive Negative Neutral
2009 56% 33% 11%
2010 47% 42% 11%
2011 56% 40% 4%
2012 49% 43% 8%
2013 41% 45% 14%
President Barack Obama’s personal favorability ratings have served as a political firewall that sustained him through the Great Recession, grueling fights with congressional Republicans and his re-election campaign.
But after a rough start to Obama’s second term, Americans increasingly view the president unfavorably, and an analysis of public polling shows it has become more difficult over time for Obama to fully rebound from dents in his ratings.
“It’s a slow cumulative effect,” Republican pollster David Winston said, adding that personal favorability “is a much harder number to move if it starts to go south.”
Though he is barred from running for re-election, Obama still needs a strong connection with the public in order to rally Americans around his policy proposals and, in turn, to show Congress he remains politically relevant.
The president’s advisers need only look at Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, to see the impact of a crumbling relationship with the public. Positive impressions of the Republican trailed off in the beginning of 2005 amid public frustration with the Iraq war and the government’s flawed response to Hurricane Katrina. Bush’s favorability rating never recovered and he struggled to fulfill significant policy goals throughout the rest of his presidency.
A series of recent polls show Obama’s personal favorability now leaning negative, including an NBC News/Wall Street Journal Poll released last week that found positive views of Obama at the lowest point of his presidency and down 6 points from earlier in October. The drop follows the 16-day government shutdown, the cascade of problems during his health care law’s rollout, and another flood of revelations about U.S. government spying.
Throughout Obama’s presidency, his job approval and personal favorability ratings have generally risen and fallen in tandem. But his favorability numbers, which often reflect the public’s gut-level reaction to a politician, generally remained the more positive of the two measures. His strong likability was seen as a particular asset during his 2012 re-election campaign, when most polls showed that voters saw him in a more favorable light than his Republican rival Mitt Romney.
“For the president, it’s meant that people have cared about what he had to say because they liked him,” said Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster.
The question for the White House now is whether that dynamic will hold if the public’s personal opinions of the president continue to sour. An Associated Press-GfK poll in early October found that 52 percent of Americans didn’t think Obama was very honest and were split on whether he was even likable.
The president’s favorability has taken hits during other points in his presidency. Although his rating improved somewhat after each decline, it never fully recovered, with each rebound peaking below earlier average favorability ratings.
Past presidents have also struggled to recover from dips in their favorability ratings.
Bush left office with majorities saying they had both a negative impression of him personally and disapproved of his job performance. And former President Bill Clinton’s favorability numbers never recovered after a fall in 1998 as the Monica Lewinsky story unfolded, though his job approval remained strong through his last days at the White House.
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