… The Hillary Clinton e-mail controversy is just the latest entrée in a decades-long, calorie-rich menu provided by the former first lady and her husband. But will it make a difference in 2016? Scandal allegations are almost always an enormously time-consuming distraction and they make it virtually impossible to communicate […] Read more »
For Presidents Day, a look at presidential job approval ratings from Ike to Obama
Perhaps no measure better captures the public’s sentiment toward the president than job approval. It dates back to the earliest days of public opinion polling, when George Gallup asked about Franklin D. Roosevelt starting in the 1930s: “Do you approve or disapprove of the way ____ is handling his job […] Read more »
How the Great Wage Slowdown Hurts Democrats
It’s a simple rule: A weak economy makes for an unpopular president. President Obama is on course to become the fourth president of the last six to leave office with an approval rating well below 50 percent. Each of the previous three — both Bushes and Jimmy Carter — also […] Read more »
The Worst President Since World War II?
Is Barack Obama really the worst president since World War II? The Quinnipiac Poll announced just that result result recently. There were thereafter a number of pushbacks from that conclusion, most based on the fact that such an open-end question reflects a “recency bias” in that Americans think about the […] Read more »
Is Obama the Worst Modern President? Take Two
Conservative pundits such as the Wall St. Journal’s Peggy Noonan continue to cite the recent Quinnipiac poll as evidence that Obama is perhaps the worst president to have served during the last seven decades. For reasons I discussed in my previous post, however, I think we need to resist jumping […] Read more »
Clinton, Elder Bush Most Positively Rated Living Presidents
Americans view each of the four former living presidents more positively than negatively, while giving Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush higher favorable ratings than George W. Bush and Jimmy Carter. Current President Barack Obama has a net-negative favorable rating. CONT. Jeffrey M. Jones, Gallup Read more »