NY Times:
A substantial majority of Americans say President Obama has not developed a strategy to deal with the budget deficit, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, which also found that support for his plans to overhaul health care, rescue the auto industry and close the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, falls well below his job approval ratings.
But those ratings are superior.
But with a job approval rating of 63 percent, Mr. Obama retains considerable personal support among Democrats and independents alike. His rating has fallen to 23 percent among Republicans, from 44 percent in February, a sign that bridging the partisan divide may well remain an unaccomplished goal.
The poll was conducted after Mr. Obama completed his fourth international trip as president. He received high marks for his focus abroad, with 59 percent of those polled saying they approve of his approach to foreign policy. And after weeks of criticism from former Vice President Dick Cheney and other Republicans, 57 percent say they approve of how Mr. Obama has dealt with the threat of terrorism.
Similar to what was seen in the NBC/WSJ poll, deficits are an issue, and a majority wants to concentrate on the deficit.
Obama gets a 44/34 approve/disapprove on health care. There are no specific questions about the public option, and health care rates far behind jobs and the economy for importance.
Once again (in the NBC/WSJ poll the GOPs's 25 favorable was a new low), Republicans come in at a new low in the poll (28 favorable for the GOP, a sharp contrast to 57 favorable for the Democrats.) Whatever doubts are there about the amount of money spent (and there's lots of doubt) is not translating into GOP support. From CBS:
Republican criticism of Barack Obama's handling of the economy and other issues does not appear to be having much effect on the president's popularity, a new CBS News/New York Times poll finds. Mr. Obama's overall approval rating now stands at 63 percent, unchanged from last month. Just one in four Americans says they disapprove of the president.
On the issue deemed most important by Americans - the economy - the president holds a 57 percent approval rating. Thirty-five percent disapprove. Mr. Obama also enjoys majority approval on his handling of foreign policy (59 percent) and the threat of terrorism (57 percent).
Between the two polls (CBS/NYT and NBC/WSJ), there's more good news than bad for Obama. The NBC/WSJ has more health care data, but both polls show continued Obama strength and poor GOP numbers, along with nervousness about looming deficits and unhappiness with auto bailouts (not, alas, broken out by region, which would have been interesting.)
Tomorrow, we will not only take a look at the weekly Daily Kos Research 2000 tracking poll (last week, the GOP favs were at 22, mathcing the two polls cited here), we'll look at the pollster.com aggregate data after the CBS/NYT and NBC/WSJ polls get added in.
Bottom line: Obama's numbers are slightly lower (but strong), Americans are nervous about spending money, don;'t like bailing out corporate America, and without a viable alternative, the Democratic agenda is the only game in town.