A new CNN poll shows President Barack Obama’s approval rating dropped 8 points in one month to 45 percent, his lowest rating in more than a year and a half. The drop follows multiple scandals, including the Internal Revenue Service targeting pro-life groups and conservative organizations.
From news reports on the poll:
A new CNN/ORC International survey found that Obama’s approval rating has fallen eight percentage points in the past month alone, as revelations about U.S. surveillance programs, the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups, and the secret monitoring of journalists by the Department of Justice dominate headlines. They represent Obama’s lowest marks in the poll during the past year and a half — and a steep decline from his 53 percent approval rating just last month.
Perhaps even more troubling for the president, half of those surveyed said they no longer find him “honest or trustworthy.”
And such sentiment is extending into Obama’s own political base.
“The drop in Obama’s support is fueled by a dramatic 17-point decline over the past month among people under 30, who, along with black Americans, had been the most loyal part of the Obama coalition,” said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.
The survey of more than 1,000 Americans was conducted between June 11 and June 13.
House Republican Leader Eric Cantor talked about what the poll means and said it shows the Obama administration is failing.
“I would think it’s troubling for the president in the fact that half the American people now don’t think the president is trustworthy and honest,” the Virginia Republican said on CNN’s “New Day.” “What they’re witnessing is a Washington and a government that has abused its power and, frankly, has lost focus on the issue that most Americans care about, which is getting people back to work.”
Cantor said that it highlighted the importance of Congress.
“Congress’s role is oversight, and we are engaged in a very rigorous oversight of many of these agencies that have committed this violation of trust in the American people,” Cantor said, highlighting especially committee investigations of the IRS.
One conservative writer says the polling numbers now put Obama in the same league as President George W. Bush when his numbers dropped before the 2012 presidential election.
The Gallup Poll reported Thursday that Obama’s job approval grade has fallen to a politically embarrassing 46 percent, and that 47 percent of those polled disapprove of his second-term performance, up by three points.To add insult to injury, Obama had to swallow the news that his Republican predecessor, on whom he has blamed all of his problems, deficiencies, failures and blunders, is now seen as much more popular than Obama is right now.
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A separate nationwide Gallup survey finds that former President George W. Bush is seen as “more positive than negative for the first time since 2005, with 49 percent rating him favorably and 46 percent unfavorably.”
That may be the result of Bush’s decision to stay out of the political swamp, as he calls it, and refrain from making any disparaging remarks about his successor. But it may also signal the public’s longing for the tame $147 billion budget deficit near the end of Bush’s presidency, the 5.2 percent average unemployment rate over his eight years, and less than $2 for a gallon of regular gasoline at the end of his term in office.
Now in the sixth month of his unfocused, purposeless, scandal-ridden second term, Obama’s troubled presidency is wearing thin among many Americans who seem to have come down with a chronic case of buyer’s remorse.
