Bad News Obama: Business Owners Down On POTUS [Poll]

Apparently President Obama’s Roanoke speech (“you didn’t build that”) took its toll on the POTUS. A new Gallup poll shows that the president’s favor with business owners is falling sharply.

Some media outlets have opined that President Obama’s “you didn’t build that” business owner comments in a Roanoke speech would affect the POTUS, perhaps even becoming a turning point in the election. According to a new Gallup poll, opponent Mitt Romney might be right-on with business owners, as 59% now disapprove of the president’s job performance.

Just 35% of business owners believe that Obama is handling the presidency well, making them “one of the occupational groups with the most negative opinion of the president,” reports the Huffington Post. The group is the only one whose opinion of the POTUS has seen a significant drop since the last poll, falling from 41% approval in 2012’s first quarter.

For his own part, Mitt Romney has been ramping up his attacks on the POTUS since Obama’s fateful Roanoke speech, latching on to the “you didn’t build that” comment, and putting the clip in campaign videos to be shown at events around the country aimed to “allow small business owners the chance to respond.” Obama’s camp has held that the attacks against the president are un-founded, calling Romney’s spin on the speech “flat-out wrong.”

Some media outlets sympathetic to the POTUS say that his July 13th comments on small businesses were taken out of context. When Obama said “you didn’t build that,” he was referring to the government infrastructure that helps businesses succeed, not the businesses themselves. We’ve posted the video below so you can judge for yourself.

The results are based on 25,464 interviews Gallup conducted with working adults from April to the end of June.

Here’s a clip of President Obama’s Roanoke speech 0n business owners:

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