For the first time in eight months, President Obama’s job approval rating is no long in the red. Here is the overall trend from Pollster.com, from August 15th, 2009, to the present
(Zogby Internet polls are excluded in the above graph, due to their terrible track record.)
Now, here is the trend without Rasmussen polls, an exclusion which is becoming increasingly justified exclusion in poll analysis.
Without Rasmussen, President Obama’s job approval is now a net positive. That has not been the case for occurred roughly seven months.
This is a real trend, too, and not just statistical noise isolated to a couple of polls. Mark Blumenthal notes over twitter:
New AP and Reuters polls both find slight Obama approval gain, so 6 of 6 pollsters now show bump since Dec.
Mark follows up with the most likely the cause of this trend:
Don't overlook this as reason: % hearing "mostly bad" econ news drops to lowest point since 2008. http://t.co/...
Things were probably never going to get better for President Obama specifically, and the Democratic Party more generally, until people started sensing real economic improvement in their lives. It would seem that enough people are sensing that improvement now to make a real impact on President Obama’s approval ratings.
It is likely this trend will only continue unless even more Americans sense real economic improvement in their lives. As such, delivering on that improvement is, and should always have been, the primary job of Democrats as a governing party.
Update: With the new Quinnipiac poll showing President Obama at a net +4% job approval, Pollster.com now shows +1.0% net approval overall with Rasmussen polls, and +2.1% without Rasmussen polls. Zogby Internet polls are excluded from both figures.