No Love for Obama as Approval Ratings Hit Record Low in New Poll

Democrats and blacks still have his back, however

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LARRY DOWNING / Reuters

U.S. President Barack Obama pauses while he talks about the Affordable Care Act in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House in Washington, November 14, 2013

Update: 5:35 p.m.

President Obama’s job approval among American voters has dropped to negative territory with just 38 percent voicing their approval versus the 58 who says they disapprove, according to a national poll released Tuesday by the independent Quinnipiac University. That is one percent less than the 39% who said they approved of him in last month’s poll. The majority of the 2,692 registered voters the University in early December said that the president is not honest and trustworthy.

When asked, “Do you approve or disapprove of the way Barack Obama is handling his job as President?,” respondents gave Obama lackluster ratings even in some of his key demographics: just 41 percent of voters 18 to 29 years old and 50 percent of Hispanics said they approved of the job he was doing. On the upside, however, 76 percent of Democrats and 85 percent of black voters polled said they approved of Obama.

A national survey by the Pew Research Center and USA Today released Tuesday and conducted between Dec. 3 and Dec. 8 among 2,001 adults had a slightly different take: the survey said Obama’s steadily declining job rating actually showed modest improvements this December for the first time since last spring. Plus, the researchers found that the president engendered more public confidence on health care policy than Republican leaders in Congress did.

However, like the Quinnipiac poll, the study found that more people disapprove than approve of President Obama’s job performance and that the general trend is down, even taking this most recent bump into consideration. The Affordable Care Act have had an overall negative affect on the president’s popularity in 2013.

“A rousing chorus of Bah! Humbug! for President Barack Obama as American voters head into the holidays with little charitable to say about the president,” said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

The President dragged down Democrats too. For the first time this year, 41 percent of American voters said that they would vote for a Republican over a Democrat for the U.S. House of Representatives, verdus the 38 percent who said they would not.

This post was updated to reflect results of a Pew study released Tuesday.