President Obama Approval Rating Drops To All-Time Low
President Obama’s approval rating has hit an all-time low of 42 percent according to new poll from NBC News and the Wall Street Journal. Based-on those numbers Obama has experienced a 5 percentage point drop from his previous approval rating poll. The drop was experienced shortly after Obamacare went into play on October 1, 2013.
In comparison, Obama’s approval rating in April 2009 was an impressive 61 percent. This time around only 24 percent of respondents felt “very positive” while 32 percent said they felt “very negative” towards Obama.
NBCNews claims that there is no single reason for Obama’s approval rating drop. Instead, the poll attributes the drop to “the accumulation of setbacks since the summer–allegations of spying by the National Security Agency, the debate over Syria’s chemical weapons, the government shutdown and now intense scrutiny over the problems associated with the health care law’s federal website and its overall implementation.”
The poll found that not only has President Obama’s approval rating fallen, but politics in general are coming under attack. Only 6 percent of respondents felt “very positive” about the Republican party and only 15 percent felt “very positive” about the Democratic party. Given the government shutdown and NSA debacle those numbers seem justified.
On the Obamacare front just under 50% of voters thought the Affordable Care Act was a very bad idea while 37 percent thought it was a very good idea. 14 percent of responded were still undecided about the act.
When asked about the “direction of the U.S.” 22 percent of people polled said we are headed in the right direction. 70 percent of respondents believe the country is on the wrong track towards long-term success.
When asked specifically if the United States was in a state of decline 63 percent of people say that the U.S. is failing and only 34 percent thought the country was fine.
With no rest for tensions in sight and a new NSA hacking leak from Edward Snowden many of these numbers are likely to continue declining or remain steady at low rates for a while to come.
Do you think the government in general deserves to be viewed negatively? What do you think of Obama’s approval rating?
