Research 2000 for Daily Kos. 12/20/2009-12/24/2009. All adults. MoE 2% (Last weeks results in parentheses):
| FAVORABLE | UNFAVORABLE | NET CHANGE |
---|
PRESIDENT OBAMA | 55 (54) | 41 (42) | +2 |
| | | |
PELOSI: | 42 (41) | 50 (49) | 0 |
REID: | 31 (30) | 59 (60) | +2 |
McCONNELL: | 17 (18) | 65 (64) | -2 |
BOEHNER: | 17 (16) | 63 (64) | +2 |
| | | |
CONGRESSIONAL DEMS: | 39 (38) | 55 (56) | +2 |
CONGRESSIONAL GOPS: | 15 (16) | 68 (69) | 0 |
| | | |
DEMOCRATIC PARTY: | 41 (40) | 54 (54) | +1 |
REPUBLICAN PARTY: | 28 (27) | 62 (63) | +2 |
Full crosstabs here. This poll is updated every Friday morning, and you can see trendline graphs here.
Despite one of the bigger singular political events of the year taking place this week with the Senate passage of health care reform, the tracking poll sees very little movement. There seems to be a lot of love to go around, as two-point upticks are seen on both sides of the political aisle. Only Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell wound up shedding points, but in his case, the two-point drop he experiences this week was just the reversal of a two-point gain he experienced last week.
One intriguing thing in this week's tracking, despite the contentious nature of the health care deliberations in the Senate, was that the gains tend to be generated across the board.
While the biggest gains for President Obama this week was a three-point jump from Democrats, he also received a bump across the board, including even a net gain of one point among Republicans.
The same outcome is observed with the GOP, where the Republican Party (at large) gets identical two-point bumps among Republicans, Democrats, and Independents.
There are only two conclusions that can be drawn here. Either the movement this week was just the result of a random float of a point or two, or the holiday season has put people in a slightly better mood, and opened their hearts to the possibility of loathing politicians a little bit less.
Either is plausible, I suppose, except that the latter theory is hobbled slightly by the fact that there has been no improvement in the right track/wrong track metric over the last couple of weeks. So, while voters in the holiday spirit might make a better narrative on Christmas Day, it looks like a little unguided movement of the numbers might be the more likely explanation.