You might not have heard this, but the assembled punditocracy is convinced that 2010 will be a Democratic killing field, with the resurgent Republican Party claiming 10...20...50 seats.
One of the aggravating factors, according to the architects of conventional wisdom, has been Barack Obama's "dive in the polls".
This is a statement that is both true, and untrue:
For the purposes of the argument here, favorability ratings are used here instead of job approval. The reason why will become evident in just a moment.
There can be no doubt, of course, that the esteem in which voters hold President Obama has receded over the course of this year (with a brief rebound this month). But that should come as no surprise: even the most optimistic Democrat did not expect the honeymoon to last forever.
The better question might well be: what is the difference between the public view of President Obama now, and the public view of Candidate Obama one year ago?
The answer: almost nothing.
In the ten polls (according to the Pollster database) taken right before the election last year, the average favorability rating for Barack Obama was 56.5%, with a low of 50% and a high of 63%.
The current Pollster average for President Obama is 54.7%, with a low of 48% and a high of 63% over the past ten surveys of his favorability.
One-point-eight percent. That's what we are quibbling over.
The last time the voters made their decision, their view of Obama was very similar to where it is now.
Now, this is not to say that Democrats might not lose seats in 2010--they easily could. Two consecutive elections with gains of twenty-plus seats for the Democrats means that there will be some real potential for low-hanging fruit for the GOP. As Charlie Cook has become fond of pointing out, for example, dozens of Democrats now represent districts carried by both Bush and McCain in presidential elections.
The point is that placing the blame solely on Obama is a tad simplistic, since the public holds roughly the same view of him now that they did in 2008, when the Democrats made those double-digit gains. Public esteem for him hasn't collapsed. Rather, the people that didn't vote for him in 2008 have finally come to the conclusion that they don't like him now, an observation buttressed by a recent poll of the president's approval by the guys over at PPP.
