Poll Updates

There are a few new polls out that are worth looking at...

Just 45% rate Obama as 'good' or 'excellent' as a leader

Forty-five percent (45%) of U.S. voters now give President Obama good or excellent marks on leadership, down three points from last month and down 19 points from when he took office in January, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

Nearly one-third of voters (32%) see Obama as a poor leader, down two points from July. The percentage of voters who give the president a poor rating on leadership is double the level it was the week after his inauguration.

Nearly one-in-four voters (24%) now view the president's leadership style as too confrontational, nearly double the result found in July and the highest level measured since he took office. But 26% see the president as too cooperative, down 11 points from last month.

Still, the plurality (40%) view the president's leadership style as about right. But that's down 20 points from the end of January.

I think what's happening here is that the American people are finally getting to know Obama, his philosophy, and his methods, and it isn't coming off well at all.  Unfortunately, this is the kind of vetting that's supposed to be done by the media in the months before the election.  That didn't happen, and we are now paying for it on a national scale.

Majority of Americans oppose Obamacare

Public support for the health care reform plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats has fallen to a new low as just 42% of U.S. voters now favor the plan. That's down five points from two weeks ago and down eight points from six weeks ago.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that opposition to the plan has increased to 53%, up nine points since late June.

I think this means the public has gotten out their secret decoder ring and busted Obama and the Democrats.  The public isn't buying their tripe about lowering costs and increasing quality because that's just not possible in such a system, and most people can figure that out all by themselves.  Add to that the fact that socialized medicine has never -- NEVER -- done either of those things anywhere in the world where it's been tried, and it's a pretty ironclad case against Obamacare.

But here's the real kicker:

More significantly, 44% of voters strongly oppose the health care reform effort versus 26% who strongly favor it. Intensity has been stronger among opponents of the plan since the debate began.

Sixty-seven percent (67%) of those under 30 favor the plan while 56% of those over 65 are opposed. Among senior citizens, 46% are strongly opposed.

Predictably, 69% of Democrats favor the plan, while 79% of Republicans oppose it. Yet while 44% of Democratic voters strongly favor the reform effort, 70% of GOP voters are strongly opposed to it.

Most notable, however, is the opposition among voters not affiliated with either party. Sixty-two percent (62%) of unaffiliated voters oppose the health care plan, and 51% are strongly opposed. This marks an uptick in strong opposition among both Republicans and unaffiliateds, while the number of strongly supportive Democrats is unchanged.

This explains the failure of the astroturfing accusations, as well as the reason behind the vehement opposition to Obamacare at all of these town halls.  The passion is on the side of the opposition, and it is increasing.  And those senior citizens and unaffiliated voters...those are the ones that really scare the Dems because those are the ones they can normally persuade to join their side.  It's not happening on this one, and that could be the key to killing it.

Given all the failures on the part of our elected leaders, no one really likes what Congress is doing right now.  But, there's a silver lining for the Right (and a stark warning for the Left) in the numbers:

Eric Ostermeier at Smart Politics looks at polling numbers from Survey USA and finds that almost everyone in the Senate has lost ground with voters.  However, net approval for Democrats has declined twice as much as Republicans:

Herb Kohl (D-WI) has seen the biggest net drop, at minus 23 points during this span.

Overall, these 25 Senators have seen their collective +24.8-point net approval rating in January fall to +14.2 points in July.

But this growing disapproval by the public toward the job its Senators are doing in Washington has not been evenly distributed between Democrats and Republicans. The Republicans have seen their net approval rating drop an average of 6.6 points from January to July, while the Democrats have seen their net approval rating drop nearly twice that amount at 12.5 points.

It looks as though Obama's coattails have become an anchor.  Eric ranks the Senators by rate of decline, and sees only two Republicans in the top 10, and three in the top 15.

The conclusion is obvious.  While many still have net positive ratings, we can expect them to continue going down as the radical Leftist agenda of Obama and the Democrats assaults the free market system and the American people.  I would expect the ratings of the GOP to level out and edge upward in direct proportion to their willingness and ability to loudly and effectively denounce that Leftist agenda, and especially in proportion to actual success in stopping things like Obamacare, cap-and-tax, and tax increases.

2010 should be a very interesting election, and a bellwether of the direction the American people want to take.  Stay tuned.

There's my two cents.