In a new poll out, ABC/WaPo takes several slices of the current political environment. For example, the idea that Obama is losing support because of the recent election:
The Post-ABC poll suggests that the administration is right about one point: The "professional left" and liberals are not the same. MSNBC host Keith Olberman said last week Obama had lost the Democratic base with the tax deal.
Not so much. As Dan Balz and Jon Cohen write, "his approval rating among liberal Democrats stands at a lofty 87 percent, almost identical to where it was in an early October poll and down marginally from a survey later that month."
Obama's approval is at 49, remarkably steady as Chris Bowers has pointed out. And then there's the idea that Republicans have supplanted him:
Republicans may have made major gains in the November elections, but they have yet to win the hearts and minds of the American people, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll...
In the new poll, just 41 percent of respondents say the GOP takeover of the House is a "good thing." About 27 percent say it is a "bad thing," and 30 percent say it won't make any difference. Most continue to say that the Republicans in Congress are not doing enough to compromise with Obama on important issues.
Don't tell the media. They've bought the idea that Republicans are popular, even though they aren't.
But on the Bush tax cut extension, there's this:
So far, he hasn't persuaded either congressional Democrats or the American people. The public, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll, broadly supports the agreement. But when asked whether it will actually help the economy, 17 percent of people said it would hurt, while 43 percent said it would make no difference.
Obama administration officials have repeatedly touted independent analyses that argue the deal will help the economy, and Larry Summers, Obama's top economic adviser, has warned of a "double-dip" recession if the agreement does not pass.
But the early polling resembles what public opinion surveys have long shown about the $787 billion stimulus, passed early last year: While most economists argue it stemmed the recession and created millions of jobs, voters remain unconvinced of its value.
So what's that really mean? Mark Blumenthal tries to make some sense of recent polling:
First, keep in mind that many Americans are unfamiliar with the specifics of the competing policy options at the center of this debate. Just how many are unfamiliar is hard to say, but Gallup released Tuesday a new national survey) in which 31 percent of Americans say they are following news about the tax agreement "very closely," 35 percent are following it "somewhat closely," 19 percent "not too closely" and 14 percent "not at all."
Look to these polls (and that of the complicated health reform data) not so much as a window on what the public wants, but rather on how well the WH has sold the program. The economists may like it, but the public is telling us that it (like the stimulus) has to be explained a lot better than it's been. Oh, and Blumenthal makes one more point:
Finally, if nothing else, these results give us some important perspective on a question we asked last week about whether President Obama was pursuing a uniquely unpopular course. Whatever the substantive merits of the deal, Obama's decision amounted not so much to choosing an unpopular option as to avoiding a third path -- failing to extend all tax cuts and unemployment benefits in the midst of partisan gridlock -- that risked public-opinion disaster. The one thing that nearly all the polls agree on is that the least popular option was letting all the tax cuts expire.
In analyzing the options and the votes, keep that point in mind. It limits your options, but it's a public opinion fact.