President Barack Obama: Most Positively-Viewed Recent Second Term President


President Barack Obama is currently the most positively viewed second term president in recent history. Despite political attacks, recent terror attack on U.S. soil (the Orlando massacre) and right-wing politicians blaming Obama for the Brexit fiasco, his approval and favorability ratings are high and continue to rise.

As CNN reports, President Barack Obama has an approval rating that has been rising steadily since January and is now at 52 percent. That approval rating is only a one percent increase from last month; however, it is five percent higher than Barack Obama’s January 2016 approval. Despite Donald Trump’s almost continuous rhetoric and bluster, the Democratic president’s over 50 percent approval rating could be a sign of good things to come for the political party in November.

The most recent poll cited by CNN is the third in a row that indicates that a clear majority of Americans view President Barack Obama favorably, and it’s also the fourth straight such CNN poll with a “net-positive” overall rating.

President Barack Obama last saw negative approval rating scores back in January 2016, before it became abundantly clear that Donald Trump was the likely GOP presidential nominee. Since January, most of Barack Obama’s approval improvement seems to have come from political moderates within his party. Among moderates, Barack Obama’s approval rating has soared a full nine points since January. Conservatives and liberals in the same poll appear to have held, for the most part, steady when it comes to their overall approval of President Obama.

When it comes to how Obama is handling the economy, his rating has remained at a steady 51 percent since December 2015, among those polled.

Despite the fact that President Barack Obama is getting some love from the polls when it comes to his overall approval rating, the majority of Americans still disapprove of the direction that the nation is heading as well as how the economy is doing (as opposed to how Barack Obama is handling the economy). Only 45 percent of Americans polled think that the American economy is doing “good,” which is down from 48 percent in May. What’s worse, only 44 percent of those polled feel that “things are going well in the U.S.” That number is down five percent from the same poll in May.

The biggest hit to the overall impression of how the country is doing came from Independents and Democrats who were polled. In May, 73 percent of Dems said that things in the U.S. were going good. In June, that number dropped to 65 percent. When it comes to Independents, only 41 percent of those polled now say that things in the U.S. are going well, which is down from 50 percent in May.

Coincidentally (or maybe not), Donald Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee in May, right around the time Democrats and Independents had a souring view of the direction the nations is taking.

Despite a sudden (but perhaps not inexplicable) pessimistic shift in outlook among Independents and Democrats, 90 percent of Dems still approve of the way President Barack Obama is doing his job. Among Independents, roughly half approve of Barack Obama and his handling of the presidency.

In addition to a steady rise in President Barack Obama’s approval ratings, his favorability has also jumped from 48 percent (in December) to an impressive 53 percent currently.

Those numbers mean that President Barack Obama is currently the most positively viewed recent second-term president (at least on this stage of his term).

When Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan reached this stage in their respective presidencies, they were favorably viewed by just less than half of those polled. At this stage in his presidency, George W. Bush had a dismal favorability rating of just 38 percent in the summer months of 2008.

When it comes to overall approval, President Barack Obama’s current numbers greatly outshine George W. Bush’s (Bush was at a meager 30 percent approval rating at this point in his final term). Barack Obama is also markedly more favored than Ronald Reagan, whose approval rating was at 48 percent at the same respective time in his presidency. Only Bill Clinton had better approval ratings during the final stretch of his presidency with an approval rating of 55 percent.

Democratic politicians and members of the Democratic party alike are hopeful that President Barack Obama’s historically high approval ratings will help Hillary Clinton secure her path to the White House in November.

[Photo by Aude Guerrucci-Pool/Getty Images]

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