Public Policy Polling for Daily Kos and SEIU (7/14-17, MoE: ±3.1, registered voters, Obama trendlines 7/7-10, all others 6/23-26):
Barack Obama posts his lowest job approval score in the Daily Kos/SEIU State of the Nation poll since late April, and so we wonder: Is this another summertime swoon, or are the president's recent poor numbers evidence of something different and perhaps more serious? Looking at
TPM's poll tracker (which aggregates data from many pollster), we can see that last year, Obama's job approvals started getting worse in June before recovering toward the end of the year:
If for some reason it's seasonal, though, I have to admit I can't imagine why that would be. Dialing back two summers, it would be easy to pin at least part of the blame on the crazy town halls and ensuing media coverage. But unless Democrats are more likely to go on vacation and less likely to answer calls from pollsters during the summertime (something that doesn't seem borne out by our sample data), I'm not sure I can see why this time of year should offer any particular issues for Barack Obama.
As always, one poll does not equal a trend. But if there is something deeper at work here, it could very well be the poor shape of the economy and the weak jobs numbers taking a toll on the president. We'll have to keep a close eye, to be sure.