President Obama’s middling job approval rating has been quite steady over the last few months, devoid of much movement outside of the relatively subtle shifts seen from poll to poll.
This is nothing new: Based on Gallup’s polling, Barack Obama’s approval rating has the smallest standard deviation of any modern president. That is, Americans’ view of his job performance has seen the least variation of any president going back to Harry Truman. If it seems like Obama’s job approval is basically static, that’s because it is. CONT.
Geoffrey Skelley, Sabato’s Crystal Ball
it’s easy to mistake these graphs as something that has happened over time, with time being on the horizontal axis.
That is the danger.
About averages: a candidate with two polls 49% and 51% polls, and a candidate with two polls 70% and 30% polls will average 50% but clearly, one is very different from the other.
Dubya’s average is higher than Obama’s? This is surprising until you realize, that:
1. Gallup skews right
2. Bush had an unfair 9/11 peak advantage.