Following a statistical breakdown of the Tea Party, Quinnipiac University today released the results of a new presidential poll. Despite his 22-pen win on health care, Barack Obama only wangled a 45% approval rating from more than 1,500 American voters who were surveyed on Monday and Tuesday after the House cleared the bill. A Gallup poll, also released today, had Obama’s approval rating at 51%, i.e. basically unchanged from ratings during this whole month, based on rolling-average surveys done Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.
With margins of error taken into account, the ratings overlap and both show a pretty tepid reaction from the hoi polloi given all the celebration over the historic comeback, perhaps indicating the American people are still too weary from all the squabbling to throw out a thumbs up or that unhappiness with the bill trumps the refreshing efficacy that accompanied its passing. The Quinnipiac poll showed that 49% of Americans disapprove of the health care reform now, compared to 54% before the vote.
“The people who have been celebrating are the people who were for it to begin with,” says Peter Brown, associate director at Quinnipiac. “The opposition was very strong and remains unhappy with the drift of what’s going on. The notion that [the public’s opinion] would change flies in the face of what we know about polling and American politics. I don’t think anyone thought that everyone was going to put down their rhetorical weapons and make nice. This is about serious disagreement.”
An interesting point of comparison: After Congress adjourned on Oct. 8, 1994 with Clinton’s health care plan doornail-dead, his approval rating was 42%, according to Gallup poll archives. His lowest point was 37% during June 1993, as he struggled to effect change less than six months after he took office, and his highest was 73% in December 1998, as voters rallied behind him in the wake of the impeachment crisis. Gallup has Obama’s high and low so far at 68%, as he took office, and 47%, as he waged his health-care battle in the first months of this year.
All in all, Brown thinks that 51% beats a poke in the eye with a stick. “The White House isn’t jumping up and down about these numbers,” Brown says. “But it could have been worse.” He believes the administration will just be happy to see a bump at all and attributes it, at least partly, to people’s context-free tendency to side with the winner after the race is over (regardless of who they were cheering on during the last legs).
