Public Policy Polling for Daily Kos & SEIU. 1/5-8. Registered voters. MoE ±3.1% (Obama trendlines 1/5-8, all others 12/15-18/2011):
The Daily Kos/SEIU weekly State of the Nation poll just celebrated its one-year anniversary, which means we now have a pretty great data set stretching all the way back to January of 2011. What's particularly fun is that we can start comparing new numbers to the way things looked exactly a year ago: In some cases, not much has changed, but in others, the differences are dramatic. What popped out at me most this week were the favorability numbers for America's two major political parties.
When we first asked these questions on the weekend of Jan. 14-16, 2011, here's what we saw:
Q: Do you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of the Democratic Party?
Favorable: 42
Unfavorable: 49
Not sure: 10
Net favorability: -7
Q: Do you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of the Republican Party?
Favorable: 36
Unfavorable: 51
Not sure: 13
Net favorability: -15
And now, a year later, you can see that Democrats have actually improved a touch to 44-48 (net -4), while the GOP has fallen considerably, to 29-58 (net -29)—almost twice as bad as its standing when the 112th Congress was sworn in. And this slippage really does seem to be confined largely to Republicans. Barack Obama's and Harry Reid's numbers have barely budged, while Mitch McConnell's job approval went from 19-33 to 17-45. John Boehner was tested last week, but his collapse has been the greatest, year-on-year: from a positive 35-28 to a sharply negative 24-51. Nancy Pelosi has fallen 8 net points, but that pales in comparison to Boehner's 35-point descent.
Of course, looking at year-long trendlines hides shorter-term movement in our polling, so none of this is to suggest that things have been steady for Democrats all year long. Indeed, President Obama saw a big swoon in his ratings over the summer and has only recovered more recently. But I still think the moral of the story is that the more Americans get to see Republicans governing up close and personal, the less they like them.
