Research 2000 for Daily Kos. 9/28/2009-10/1/2009. All adults. MoE 2% (Last weeks results in parentheses):
| FAVORABLE | UNFAVORABLE | NET CHANGE |
---|
PRESIDENT OBAMA | 53 (54) | 39 (38) | -2 |
| | | |
PELOSI: | 35 (34) | 57 (57) | +1 |
REID: | 32 (31) | 58 (57) | 0 |
McCONNELL: | 19 (18) | 63 (64) | +2 |
BOEHNER: | 13 (12) | 61 (63) | +3 |
| | | |
CONGRESSIONAL DEMS: | 39 (38) | 55 (57) | +3 |
CONGRESSIONAL GOPS: | 18 (17) | 69 (70) | +2 |
| | | |
DEMOCRATIC PARTY: | 41 (40) | 49 (50) | +2 |
REPUBLICAN PARTY: | 23 (22) | 66 (68) | +3 |
Full crosstabs here. This poll is updated every Friday morning, and you can see trendline graphs here.
With the exception of a incremental slip of a couple of points for President Obama, this week's edition of the State of the Nation Tracking Poll tells us very, very little. The rest of the political creatures that were tested (alas, except for Harry Reid, who stood pat) saw their net favorabilities improve by a fairly insignificant 1-3 points. What makes the changes more insignificant is that they were devoid of any real pattern. The Congressional Democrats improved slightly more than the Congressional Republicans. But the Republican Party improved slightly more than the Democratic Party.
Two things are keeping Obama's numbers at bay, it seems. One is that Independents are in a "wait and see" mode, even as Obama re-consolidates his Democratic base. Three weeks ago, when Obama was beginning his big post-speech surge, his favorabilities with Independents stood at 60%. Three weeks later, that figure now stands at 52%. What is interesting, however, is that the percentage of Independents whose view of the president is unfavorable has actually held steady at 36%. The percent who aren't sure has tripled from 4% to 12%. Quite possibly, these were people who were jazzed by his speech (remember, his net favorables among Independents leapt 6% in that week alone), and are now waiting to see what comes of it.
The second thing keeping Obama's numbers at bay is a factor that has been little mentioned in the traditional media, but is so glaring that it needs to be mentioned--the South. In future weeks, Daily Kos is considering disaggregating our numbers on our polling scoreboard (featured on the front page) by the South versus the rest of the nation. The differences are truly that stark.
This week, President Obama's favorability rating in the South stands at 25%, with 70% having an unfavorable view. While the net fav/unfav has been this wide before, this is the lowest positive favorability for the President in the South that we have seen all year.
While it might be tempting to limit this Southern analysis to President Obama (and draw some predictable-but-not-entirely accurate conclusions), the fact is that it runs a bit deeper than that.
Consider the regional breakdown on the DK/R2K variation of the "Congressional Ballot Test." When voters are asked whether they want to see more Democrats elected to Congress or more Republicans, Democrats have a national lead of six points. But look how it breaks down regionally:
Net Advantage on "Generic Ballot Test", By Region, 10/1/09:
National: Democrats +6
Northeast: Democrats +43
Midwest: Democrats +11
West: Democrats +8
South: Republicans +26
Of course, the Republicanization of the South is nothing new. One of Obama's biggest feats in 2008 was winning a small handful of Southern states, the first non-Southern Democrat to do so in two generations.
There can be little doubt, however, that the political schism between the South and the rest of the nation has deepened with the election of Barack Obama, to the point where we stand now. It is a fascinating trend, which has been made more apparent because it is really two trends happening at once--the collapse of Southern support for Democrats, and the equal impact of the collapse of the GOP everywhere else: According to this tracker, the GOP has a net favorability of +14 in the South. In the rest of the nation, their "next-best" region is the West, where the GOP stands at a net favorability of -60.
This exacerbates the discrepancies between GOP performance in the South and elsewhere.