An interesting Tuesday post by Gallup is also an interesting follow-up to our Sunday post about gas prices (see Looking under the hood of recent national polls). Gallup (see top graphic):
A new Gallup analysis of the relationship between Americans' views of the economy and of recent presidents' job performance finds that the two measures are not always closely related, but have been thus far in 2012. The analysis suggests that if economic confidence rises in the coming months, President Barack Obama's job approval rating will likely rise as well.
There does seem to be, at times, a good relationship between economic confidence and presidential job approval (
correlation with gas prices are less well established, and things like unemployment and especially GDP—i.e. broader indicators of economic well being—matter more). But the name of the game is not job approval, of course, it's reelection, so the former is important in the context of the latter: If higher job approval gets you reelected, then that which affects approval matters.
That being said, it's interesting that in the most recent data, highlighted by a bracket on the right, shows a widening gap between improved economic confidence and Obama's job approval. Is that a blip, or due to other factors like hardening partisan attitudes, or perhaps media coverage as a factor?
It isn't simply relentless negative media coverage of Obama (if anything, that's somewhat improved over the last few months):
But after all, a faltering economy is always top of the news, but as this Pew PEJ data shows, an improving economy hasn't exactly been Topic A in 2012:
Still even without the news prompts, the economy is improving, and economic confidence is rising with it.
That has to be good news for the White House if it continues, even if the economy has to compete with Republican election gaffes and violent weather on the evening news.