More Poll Uh-Ohs

First, Harris:

Barack Obama might have hoped that an unexpected Nobel Peace Prize might halt his slide in the polls. Not so, says the latest Harris interactive poll, conducted over the last week. The survey contacted over 2200 adults on line, and his numbers dropped significantly from September's poll, giving Obama an unfavorability rating of -10:

President Obama may have won the Nobel Peace Prize, but unfortunately, he is not winning accolades from the American public as his job approval rating continues its downward slide. In September, U.S. adults were split almost evenly on the job the President has been doing – 49% gave him positive ratings and 51% gave him negative ratings. This month, the number giving him positive ratings drops to 45% while over half of Americans (55%) give him negative ratings. ….

The approval ratings of the president by Democrats and Republicans are as one would expect with 77% of Democrats giving President Obama positive ratings compared to 14% of Republicans. Independents, however, are more down on the president as 60% give him negative ratings while 40% give him positive marks on his overall job performance.

The White House should also be concerned about weakness in some of President Obama's strongest supporters. During the election, Echo Boomers (those aged 18-32) were the strongest age group supporting the president. Now they are of mixed minds on his performance as just over half (51%) give the president positive ratings and 49% give him negative ratings. The oldest generation, Matures (those aged 64 and older) are even more negative with just 39% giving President Obama positive marks and 61% giving him negative marks.

Obama's not as bad off as Congress -- shocker, I know -- but it's bad.  Hot Air sums up a deeper analysis of the numbers:

The percentage of voters rating Obama "excellent" peaked in April at 18%, but has now dropped to 10%. "Pretty good" has come in for a softer landing, from 42% in May to 35% now. "Poor" has almost doubled from April's 15% to October's 28%, while "only fair" has remained constant over the last seven months at around the current 27%.

As the Harris summary mentions, the only age group Obama wins is the youngest (18-32), and only barely at 51%/49%, and only 10% of these think Obama has done an "excellent" job. He loses the other three age categories by wide margins, from 10 points to 22 points. Most troubling for Obama and Democrats as they close out their first year of single-party control of DC are the independents. Obama has a -20 favorability gap among unaffiliated voters, with only 6% rating him as "excellent" while 28% rate him "poor".

Much of this is likely driven by Obama's tin-eared insistence on nationalizing the health care system over the flat-out rejection of the American people.

Another poll paints an even worse picture, as reported by Brian Faughnan:

I've written before about the tendency of Democracy Corps - the polling/strategy firm headed by James Carville and Stanley Greenberg - to tout polls favorable to Democrats and 'hide' polls that deliver bad news. They 'hide' them by publishing them on their site without fanfare, without analysis, and without calling attention to them in any way. Their recent Congressional Battleground survey for example, doesn't appear to have been mentioned in the news or on the blogs at all - until now.

By contrast, Carville and Greenberg produced a beautiful multi-page, multi-color summmary of their April survey, and promoted it on their site with a glowing writeup:

A new survey by Democracy Corps and Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research in the 40 most marginal Democratic seats shows Democratic incumbents holding strong in the territory where nearly all expect Republicans to reclaim lost ground. With Congress poised to vote on the president's budget, the Democratic incumbents are winning over 50 percent of the vote - stable over the last three months - and hold a double-digit lead against their generic challengers even in the 20 most difficult seats.

The most recent poll by contrast, doesn't even warrant a mention on the site. When you see the results, it's obvious why.

The Democracy Corps survey is taken in 60 'battleground' House seats - 40 held by Democrats and 20 held by Republicans. The results of this October poll should be extremely worrisome to Democrat incumbents.

The Democratic party has lost 13 points since April. The Democratic incumbents have lost 9 points, and the GOP incumbents have lost just 5 points.

the Democratic incumbents have a 3 point edge in their own districts, while the GOP incumbents hold a 9 point advantage. The Democrats have lost 10 points from their April margin, while the GOP has gained 3.

The poll also shows how much ground Democrats have lost on the issues. In April they held a 16 point edge in these battleground districts on handling the economy; now they trail by 3. Democrats had a 24 point edge on health care; now the two parties are tied. Republicans have improved their edge on taxes and on spending.

In both Republican and Democratic districts, a plurality of voters say 'I really want to be able to vote for a Republican for Congress because at least he or she won't be a rubber stamp for national Democrats and all of their wasteful spending.'

In both Republican and Democratic districts, a plurality of voters say 'President Obama's economic policies have run up a record federal deficit while failing to end the recession or slow the record pace of job losses.'

Sounds good to me!  I say let's drive the nails home in the coffin lid.  If Obama and the Dems want to commit political suicide by passing this disaster under the current conditions, we should do everything in our power to oblige them when it's all over.

There's my two cents.