Public Policy Polling for Daily Kos & SEIU. 3/8-11. Registered voters. MoE ±3.1% (Obama trendlines 3/1-4, all others 2/23-26):
|
FAVORABLE |
UNFAVORABLE |
NET CHANGE |
PRESIDENT OBAMA |
48 (47) |
47 (49) |
3 |
DEMOCRATIC PARTY |
44 (44) |
47 (47) |
0 |
REPUBLICAN PARTY |
31 (31) |
56 (57) |
1 |
|
APPROVE |
DISAPPROVE |
NET CHANGE |
PRESIDENT OBAMA |
48 (46) |
49 (50) |
3 |
HARRY REID |
21 (19) |
45 (49) |
6 |
MITCH MCCONNELL |
18 (16) |
43 (43) |
2 |
This is why you should never, ever trust just a single poll to tell you what's happening with the state of the nation. Two surveys released on Monday to great fanfare—one from the
New York Times, the other from the
Washington Post—both showed Barack Obama's approval rating falling. Both polls got a lot of attention and provoked a lot of consternation. I even got a worried email from my mother.
But one poll does not a trend make. And two polls from different polling outfits don't make a trend either, since you need to compare apples to apples: the NYT's new numbers to their old, and likewise for the WaPo. Wait until next month's surveys, at least, before concluding that there's some genuine downward movement to Obama's numbers. After all, the president may very well bounce back by then, and all this wailing will look rather foolish.
You don't even need to wait that long, though, to question whether these two newspapers are right. In an impressive bit of procrustean writing, the Times tries to find a third survey that matches what they and the Post are seeing, observing that the "latest tracking poll from Gallup, also released Monday, showed Mr. Obama with an approval rating of 49 percent." That's almost unconscionably deceptive, since Gallup's numbers have been on a unmistakable upswing. Indeed, says Gallup: "Obama's current approval rating is the highest measured since early February, and before that the highest since June 2011."
You wouldn't know that from reading what the NYT has to say, of course. And with PPP's newest numbers for Daily Kos and SEIU, there are now two polls which say the president's job approvals have moved up, not down, in recent days. To be clear, I'm not insisting that we're necessarily right and they're wrong. The opposite could well be the case. My point is simply that there's no clear message being sent by this latest batch of polls, and any attempt to craft a narrative based on a mere two surveys—especially when they're contradicted by two other surveys—is simplistic at best and dangerous at worst.