Barack Obama averaged 46.8% job approval during his 14th quarter in office, marking a slight improvement from quarter 13. His quarterly average approval rating has improved at least slightly in each of the last three quarters after dipping to a low 41.0% in the 11th quarter. [cont.] Jeffrey M. Jones, […] Read more »
The Politics of Anything Goes
Barack Obama first captured the national spotlight with a speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention in Boston in which he called for an end to the politics of division. … Now, faced with a tough re-election fight, President Obama has, in fundamental respects, adopted the strategy he denounced eight years […] Read more »
People’s minds are made up, unlikely to change
Is the race for president already over? On one level, the answer is clearly no. … But a growing number of political scientists and campaign consultants – backed by the latest polling data – think the daily campaign back-and-forth is having no significant effect on voters. [cont.] Dave Helling, McClatchy Newspapers Read more »
Do Presidential Polls Break Toward Challengers?
There are certainly some good reasons to think that the polls could break toward Mitt Romney. For instance, many polls out now were conducted among registered voters; when pollsters switch over to likely voter polls instead — which assess each voter’s probability of actually casting a ballot on Nov. 6 […] Read more »
The Truth About Gun Politics: Many Americans Support Restrictions
… Obama’s reluctance to address gun control means he is failing to articulate what remains a strong preference within his coalition. Gun control, in fact, remains a majority position with the same groups generally most enthusiastic about Obama’s recent embrace of gay marriage, free access to contraception in health insurance, […] Read more »
Does Romney Have an Edge From Likely Voter Polls?
… Are likely voter polls actually more accurate than registered voter ones? To study this, I looked for as many instances as I could in our polling database for when pollsters included both registered voter and likely voter numbers in the same survey release. [cont.] Nate Silver, New York Times Read more »