It looks like it’s going to be a long-road to reelection for US President Barack Obama; the approval rating for the commander in chief is at its lowest ever.
The results of a new Gallup poll show that American approval of the president’s job performance has dipped before 40 percent for the first time since he took the oath of office in January 2009. Data collected in the survey, conducted over the course of three days last week from answers given by 1,500 adults, reveal that only 39 percent of Americans approve of Barack Obama’s job as president; 54 percent disapprove.
Other surveys conducted by polling agencies as of late have revealed similar standings in regards to the president’s job approval rating, though Gallup’s results, published late Sunday, are the more depressing for Obama yet. Earlier this month, the Washington Post, CNN and Rasmussen Reports all tallied his approval rating at 44 percent, with researchers at Fox News saying only 42 percent are in favor of the work Obama has been doing.
On August 2, CNN released the results of poll in which it revealed that 84 percent of Americans were disapproving of the job of the US Congress, as lawmakers waited for the eleventh hour to strike a debt ceiling deal. At that time, 45 percent of Americans offered approval of President Obama, marking the second lowest rating he received during his administration.
Early into his presidency, Obama received an approval rating of 76 percent, though that tally has only waned since. In recent weeks, his approval rating peaked at 53 percent following the death of Osama bin Laden.
In a summation accompanying yesterday’s release of the poll statistics, Gallup writes that “A deeply unsettled political landscape, with voters in a fiercely anti-incumbent mood, is framing the 2012 presidential race 15 months before Americans decide whether to give Obama a second term or hand power to the Republicans.”
“Trying to ride out what seems to be an unrelenting storm of economic anxiety, people in the United States increasingly are voicing disgust with most all of the men and women, Obama included, they sent to Washington to govern them.”
President Obama is speaking today in Cannon Falls, Minnesota, the first stop on a three-day, three-state bus tour of the US.