Quote of the Day – Drinking Republicans
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James Joyner | Monday, March 9, 2009 |
“There’s a lot of interesting data in the NBC/WSJ poll, although much of it is good news for the Dems and sobering news for the GOP (there’s been so much sobering news the last four years I feel like drinking). ” – Glen Bolger
Glen’s a founding partner of Public Opinion Strategies, which employs my wife as its Chief Operating Officer and conducts said poll in conjunction with Peter Hart Research. The comments come on POS’ new blog, TQIA (Turning Questions into Answers). The closest the poll comes to good news for the GOP is the number of people who think Obama’s stimulus package is a bad idea has jumped from 27 percent to 36 percent since January.
Elsewhere on the blog, Alex Bratty points out, as others have, that Obama’s high approval ratings actually are pretty average at this stage of the game. She’s even got a handy dandy graphic:
Finally, Neil Newhouse jokes that the improvement in the “right direction/wrong track” numbers since January despite horrible economic news can only be explained by the resurgence of his alma mater’s basketball team.
About the Author: James Joyner is the publisher of Outside the Beltway and the managing editor of the Atlantic Council. He's a former Army officer, Desert Storm vet, and college professor with a PhD in political science from The University of Alabama. He lives just outside the Beltway in Alexandria, Virginia with his wife and infant daughter.
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The Alex Bratty chart presents the contrarian view that the lower your initial job approval rating, the more likely you will get re-elected.
I think that graphic is a bit misleading, as all the other numbers but Obama's rely on Gallup polling. I can't think of any reason to not include Gallup numbers for Obama unless you are trying to use low numbers. Gallup showed Obama at 66 approval at the beginning of February and at 64 at the end of February. I'm not stating that his numbers aren't "average," but I do think it's important to use the same polls if you are going to compare things like this.
