Public Policy Polling for Daily Kos & SEIU (MoE: ±3.1, 3/10-13, registered voters, Obama trendlines 3/4-6, all others 2/24-27):
Oof - not a fun week. President Obama's favorables and approvals both saw substantial drops, the latter falling ten points in a week. And compared to two weeks ago (the non-Obama questions show up bi-weekly), the Democratic Party dropped and Harry Reid dropped, too, while the GOP soared (except Mitch McConnell - he managed to shed a few). So what's going on here?
Let's look at that biggest decline, in Obama's job approval. He saw a 9-point slide among Democrats but a much bigger 20-point fall among those fickle independents. BUt just a week ago, it was independents who were responsible for Dems jumping up on the generic ballot!
The problem, though, with looking at independents (or any party self-identification) is that people can change their mind about their political affiliation each week. Indeed, the share of independents in our sample tends to fluctuate several percent each week. Questions about race, age, and gender (which most of us don't have a lot of control over) tend to yield more stable populations.
So what makes me think this drop is at least something of a blip is Obama's 9-point fall among African Americans. Black voters have been incredibly reliable supporters of the president for quite some time, and I have a hard time imagining Obama is shedding support among this community. I'll caveat this by saying that our black voter sample is small (around 100), and it does tend to bounce around quite a bit - Obama's numbers three weeks ago among blacks were actually worse than today's.
Obama also saw a 9-point drop among our much larger white sample, but those numbers, too, just put him back to where he was three weeks previously. Indeed, his overall approvals then were 46-49, just three points better than this week's. So we're back to the poll-watcher's eternal question: Is it a trend or a blip? I don't think your average voter is as tuned into the news as many of the folks here, and there haven't been a lot of domestic game-changers in recent weeks. (The biggest news has all been out of Japan, and before that, Libya.) The one "background" issue that most Americans are probably keenly aware of is soaring gas prices, but if folks wanted to blame Obama, then why did his numbers rise last week? In any event, we'll likely try asking about gas prices in an upcoming poll. Until then, stay tuned!
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