A decidedly mixed bag, from Quinnipiac:
American voters disapprove 56 - 38 percent of the way President Barack Obama is handling the economy, but by 45 - 38 percent they trust the president more than congressional Republicans to handle the economy, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.
Why might voters prefer Obama to the GOP on the economy? Here are some clues:
The country is in a recession, 71 percent of American voters say, but by 54 - 27 percent they blame former President George W. Bush more than President Obama. [...]
• Voters will blame Republicans over Obama 48 - 34 percent if the debt limit is not raised;
• Voters say 67 - 25 percent that an agreement to raise the debt ceiling should include tax hikes for the wealthy and corporations, not just spending cuts;
•Voters say 45 - 37 percent that Obama's proposals to raise revenues are "closing loopholes," rather than "tax hikes" ....
And here's yet another reason, this time drawing on new polling from Gallup, as assessed by Nate Silver:
The average Republican voter, based on this data, wants a mix of 26 percent tax increases to 74 percent spending cuts. The average independent voter prefers a 34-to-66 mix, while the average Democratic voter wants a 46-to-54 mix.
Yet congressional Republicans, as Nate points out, literally want a 0-to-100 mix:
However, all but 7 Republicans in the House of Representatives, or 97 percent of them, have signed the pledge of Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform stating that any net tax increases are unacceptable. One might have believed this to be simply a negotiating position. But the proposal that Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell floated yesterday, which would give up on striking a deal and instead rely on some procedural gymnastics to burden Mr. Obama with having to raise the debt ceiling, suggests otherwise. Republicans in the House really may be of the view that a deal with a 3:1 or 4:1 or 5:1 ratio of spending cuts to tax increases is worse than none at all.
This image from 538 explains it well:
To quote Silver one final time, "If Republicans in the House insist upon zero tax increases, there is a larger ideological gap between House Republicans and Republican voters than there is between Republican voters and Democratic ones."
Obama may well come out the victor in the debt limit negotiations. But being better than the bad guy only counts for so much. Unfortunately, the president isn't running for reelection against the Congressional GOP. Voters might find a way to favor Mitt Romney on the economy over Barack Obama, even if the likes of Eric Cantor and Mitch McConnell are deep in the doghouse. The bottom line is that even if the polling looks passable for now, the jobs situation needs to start improving to ward against this possible fate.
