President Obama will be a one-term president, said nearly half of registered voters polled by The Hill.
While 46 percent of likely voters predicted Obama will lose next year, 41 percent said he will win, a narrow margin just outside the poll’s margin of error that reflects the public’s split opinion about the president. The remaining 13 percent were unsure.
When it comes to grading his first term, 51 percent of polled voters said Obama was either a failure (37 percent) or not very successful (14 percent), while 48 percent said he was either very successful (16 percent) or somewhat successful (32 percent).
Predictably, 77 percent of Republicans said there will be no second term for Obama while 70 percent of Democrats said there will be. Independents predicted 43 percent to 40 percent that Obama will be reelected, but that 3-point difference was within the poll’s margin of error. If the 17 percent of independents who are unsure could be persuaded to break Obama’s way, they could be the key to his victory.
But that scenario looks unlikely, as a majority (54 percent) of independents think his first-term performance has been unsuccessful (18 percent said it has not been very successful and 36 percent said it has been a failure).
The president still has strong support from black voters and women: Seventy-nine percent of blacks said he’ll be reelected and 94 percent said he’s been successful during his first term. While 55 percent of men said Obama’s first term wasn’t successful, 52 percent of women said it had been a success.
Obama’s low approval numbers in polls have often been attributed to the terrible economy and lack of promised growth, and voters in the poll confirmed that they look to the president for leadership on that score.
An overwhelming 92 percent of likely voters said the choice of president is important in determining the country’s economic strength (66 percent said it is very important and 26 percent called it somewhat important), yet the middle class isn’t as concerned as are the poor and wealthy.
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2 Responses
The fault in such polls is that the election is between two people, not a vote of confidence in Obama.
While it is possible that the Republicans will nominate a “generic” candidate who has the “good government” credentials of the “country club” (Wall Street) Republicans, combined with the populist anger of the “Sam’s Club” (Tea Party) wing of the party, AND, who is religious enough to appeal broadly without turning off anyone, Obama is betting that won’t happen (and the article is assuming that it will happen).
This article is full of unsound conclusions and useless poll results.
For starters, the second paragraph, first sentence, reads as follow: “While 46 percent of likely voters predicted Obama will lose next year, 41 percent said he will win, a narrow margin just outside the poll’s margin of error that reflects the public’s split opinion about the president.”
The sentence illogically and incorrectly concludes that 46-41 response to the question – a prediction about the outcome of the election – “reflects the public’s split opinion about the president.” It reflects only different predictions about the outcome of the next election, not how the poll respondents personally expect to vote, but about how they expect the electorate to vote.
The poll results with respect to the “success” of Mr. Obama’s first term reflect only a response to a question about success, not whether the respondents would vote for the President in 2012. At this time, I favor re-election of the President (assuming his Republican opponent is any one of the 7 dwarfs currently seeking the nomination), and I consider his first term unsuccessful in certain material respects – particularly the continuing dismal economy – but I see his policies and judgment far superior to any of his prosective opponents, but if the pollsters in this article asked me about his “success”, they would count me among his opponents.
The penultimate paragraph refers to “low approval numbers in polls” but does not report on or refer to those numbers or how accurately approval numbers 11 months before an election predict the re-election of an incumbent. So this article is worth pretty much what I paid for it.