Research 2000 for Daily Kos. 5/31/2010-6/3/2010. Registered Voters. MoE 2.8% (Last week's results in parentheses):
| FAVORABLE | UNFAVORABLE | NET CHANGE |
---|
PRESIDENT OBAMA | 51 (54) | 44 (41) | -6 |
| | | |
PELOSI: | 37 (39) | 52 (51) | -3 |
REID: | 32 (31) | 57 (58) | +2 |
McCONNELL: | 24 (24) | 60 (61) | +1 |
BOEHNER: | 21 (22) | 59 (60) | 0 |
| | | |
CONGRESSIONAL DEMS: | 36 (37) | 59 (58) | -2 |
CONGRESSIONAL GOPS: | 22 (23) | 66 (67) | 0 |
| | | |
DEMOCRATIC PARTY: | 38 (39) | 55 (54) | -2 |
REPUBLICAN PARTY: | 29 (30) | 64 (64) | -1 |
Full crosstabs here. This poll is updated every Friday morning, and you can see trendline graphs here.
Three weeks of increasing voter pessimism has to be considered, if not a trend, at least a warning signal. And, for the third straight week, the bulk of the movement in this week's Daily Kos/State of the Nation tracking poll is downward.
The biggest victim of this collective voter frown, at least this week, was President Obama, whose net favorability hits an all-time low in the 17 months that this tracking poll has been in place (note that methodologies were changed in March to go from adults to registered voters). His +7 favorability spread (51/44) is a six-point dip from just last week. He was not alone in the downward slide, however, as four other entities polled saw dips between one point and three points. Of the four Republican entities polled, only one saw a dip (the party at-large), while two others held steady.
Of greater concern for the Democrats, besides the incremental drops for everyone not named Barack Obama, is the slide of the affirmative side of the right track-wrong track metric back below 40%. After several weeks of climbing, this is the third straight week of decline in overall optimism about the trajectory in which the nation is heading:
Note that in just three weeks, the percentage of Americans identifying the nation as on the "wrong track" has grown from 54% all the way up to 59%.
To what do we owe this newfound pessimism? It could certainly have its genesis in the events down in the gulf. It could also have something to do with the huge u-turn the stock market has taken in the past month, which might have deflated voter hopes that there was light at the end of the tunnel that has been the flagging economy.
There is ample cause for increased Democratic optimism in recent weeks about their electoral fortunes in November. There has been a noticeable uptick in horse race polling in races around the country, there is the PA-12 special election result, to say nothing of primaries where the GOP has shafted their more electable candidates.
However, this tracking poll should make clear that there are still obstacles, and sizeable ones, that Democrats need to negotiate before they make it to November. While the GOP is doing their damnedest to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, there is still much that must be done before voters feel comfortable enough with Democratic rule to prolong its existence.