Monday, April 6, 2009

Obama is the Great Divider


Partisan Gap in Obama Job Approval Widest in Modern Era
For all his hopes about bipartisanship, Barack Obama has the most polarized early job approval ratings of any president in the past four decades. The 61-point partisan gap in opinions about Obama's job performance is the result of a combination of high Democratic ratings for the president -- 88% job approval among Democrats -- and relatively low approval ratings among Republicans (27%).
By comparison, there was a somewhat smaller 51-point partisan gap in views of George W. Bush's job performance in April 2001, a few months into his first term. At that time, Republican enthusiasm for Bush was comparable to how Democrats feel about Obama today, but there was substantially less criticism from members of the opposition party. Among Democrats, 36% approved of Bush's job performance in April 2001; that compares with a 27% job approval rating for Obama among Republicans today.
The partisan gap in Bill Clinton's early days was also substantially smaller than what Obama faces, largely because Democrats were less enthusiastic about Clinton. In early April 1993, 71% of Democrats approved of Clinton's job performance, which is 17 points lower than Obama's current job approval among Democrats. Republican ratings of Clinton at that point (26%) are comparable to their current ratings of Obama today (27%).
The growing partisan divide in presidential approval ratings is part of a long-term trend. Going back in time, partisanship was far less evident in the early job approval ratings for both Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon. In fact, a majority of Republicans (56%) approved of Carter's job performance in late March 1977, and a majority of Democrats (55%) approved of Nixon's performance at a comparable point in his first term.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The difference is Obama took office during a major, worldwide economic crisis caused in large part by GW Bush and his cohorts.

The crisis requires major choices in order for us to come out of this mess.

Partisianship is inevitable during such times.

Fortunately we do not have "W" in office right now. If we did, (idiot) Michelle Bachmann's (R-MN) call to arm the populace might have come true.

Anonymous said...

A different -and more educated- look at these figures:

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/04/whigs-federalists-strongly-differ-on.html

These are highly partisan times in America. "Bipartisanship" (or, in the Obama nomenclature, "post-partisanship") makes for a catchy campaign slogan, but is difficult to execute upon in practice. The White House's aspirations (or pretense) of running a bipartisan administration died a quick and ugly death with two events: firstly, the House Republicans' decision to whip votes against Obama's stimulus package so as to produce a unanimous nay vote, and secondly, the Administration's decision to try and kneecap Rush Limbaugh.

Nonetheless, measurements of the partisan split in support for the President, as Pew Research has done here (they found a record partisan split in Obama's approval ratings, with 88 percent of Democrats but just 27 percent of Republicans approving of Obama's performance) are not quite as straightforward as they might seem. This is because partisan identification is at least somewhat fluid. The Republicans, in particular, have lost quite a bit of support over the past several years; those persons who continue to identify as Republicans are a hardened -- and very conservative -- lot. Just 24 percent of voters identified as Republican when Pew conducted this survey in March, which is roughly as low as that total has ever gotten.

We see some evidence of these effects in the comparison of Obama's numbers to those of George W. Bush's at a comparable point in his presidency. Obama and Bush had roughly the same level of support among members of their own party (88 percent for Obama, 87 percent for Bush) and roughly the same level of support among unaffiliated voters (57 percent for Obama, 56 for Bush). Bush, however, had more support from the opposition party (36 percent of Democrats versus 27 percent of Republicans). And yet Obama, not Bush, had the higher overall approval rating, because Democrats are a significantly larger constituency than Republicans.



A more telling measure might be to see a breakdown in support by voters who identify themselves as conservative, moderate or liberal. These categories are somewhat fluid too -- but less so than partisan ID