Plan B Forum

President Obama's job performance rating has plummeted 10 points in solidly blue California since February, an across-the-board decline that is steepest among his most fervent backers, according to the latest survey by the Field Poll.

A bare majority of California voters, just 52 percent, now approve of Obama's record in office, with 35 percent disapproving and 13 percent holding no opinion, according to the poll of 846 registered voters in the state.

The poll shows Obama has suffered the biggest erosion in support among grassroots groups including women, whose approval of the president has dropped a whopping 15 percentage points in the last five months.

Similarly, Obama's job approval ratings among registered Democrats, under-40 voters, and college graduates have declined 14 points, white non-Hispanics are down 13 points, nonpartisan voters declined 12 points, and Latinos are seven points lower in their support, the poll shows.

"Look at the constituencies that have fallen off most. ... They've basically changed their views over the last few months" regarding the president's performance, said Mark DiCamillo, director of the Field Poll.

While the majority of these reliably Democratic voter groups in California are still not in the disapproval camp, they are now sitting "on the fence" with regard to their views of Obama's performance in the wake of several difficult political months, said DiCamillo.

The poll didn't specifically track the issues that have contributed to the decline, but DiCamillo suggested headlines about "the intrusions of government" through aggressive e-mail and telephone surveillance programs probably contributed to the drop in support, particularly among younger voters.

The latest poll showed:

-- A majority of Californians - 57 percent - still view Obama in a favorable light, a figure that has remained steady since February.

-- The president's approval rating in the Bay Area, one of the strongest Democratic bastions in the country, is down nine points to 60 percent.

-- Among African American and Asian voters, support for the president remains steady at 65 percent.

The poll was taken June 26-July 21 by Field Research. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

Two new polls are out today (one national, the other in California) which underscore just how unimpressed Americans are with the president’s job performance. The latest McClatchy-Marist poll has Barack Obama’s job approval at its lowest level for nearly two years – just 41 percent. It’s his worst showing since September 2011, when his approval hit 39 percent. There can be little doubt that the wave of recent scandals has hurt the president’s standing, and undermined trust in the Administration, especially among Independents. The IRS debacle has been particularly damaging. The president’s floundering on foreign policy hasn’t helped either, with Americans disapproving of his performance in this area by a 48-41 percent margin. The president’s health care reforms are also a significant liability, with numerous polls showing strong public opposition to Obamacare.

But it is Obama’s handling of the economy that is almost certainly hitting him the hardest. According to McClatchy, only 37 percent of Americans approve of Obama in this area, compared to 56 percent who disapprove Strikingly, 54 percent of Americans still believe the country is in recession, with only 29 percent expecting their family’s finances to improve in the coming year. And, as a new Washington Post-ABC News survey finds, 35 percent of Americans strongly disapprove of the way Obama is handling the economy, compared to just 22 percent who strongly approve.

Worryingly for the White House, support for Obama is eroding even in areas of the country that are solidly liberal. In Democrat-dominated California, the latest Field Poll shows Obama’s job performance rating dropping by ten points since February, with his approval rating standing at 52 percent, down from 62 percent. As the Field pollsters note, disillusionment is sinking in among his traditionally strongest supporters:


The recent decline in the President's approval ratings in California can be seen across all demographic subgroups of the electorate. Obama's biggest declines have occurred among segments of the California electorate that had been among his strongest supporters. For example, in the past five months Obama's job approval declined fourteen points among registered Democrats (88% to 74%), fifteen points among women (from 68% to 53%), and fourteen points among voters under the age of 40 (from 71% to 57%). It has also declined fourteen points among college graduates, thirteen points among white non-Hispanics and twelve points among non-partisans.

In an effort to stem the bleeding at the polls, President Obama is delivering a major speech on the economy tomorrow at Knox College in Illinois. He faces an uphill struggle however, with Detroit’s bankruptcy a powerful reminder to Americans of the failure of big government policies and taxpayer-funded bailouts, policies that the president himself has championed. As the latest RealClear Politics poll average shows, nearly 60 percent of Americans believe the United States is heading down the wrong track. In Illinois Obama will need to offer more than empty platitudes and failed ideas to convince an increasingly sceptical American public that they should feel confident about the economic path the country is taking.

Econoline wrote:That's not surprising. Only about half of Americans are aware that Judaism is an older religion than Christianity, and 80 percent of Americans think the government is hiding knowledge of the existence of extraterrestrial life forms.

To mark the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth, Gallup thought it might be a good idea to poll Americans on their beliefs of the British naturalist's theory. But the results must have had Darwin spinning in his grave, since only 39 percent of Americans believed in the theory. The good news: only a quarter said they didn't believe it; the remaining portion either didn't have an opinion or didn't answer. (Also, only 55 percent correctly linked Darwin's name with the theory.) However, it appears that views may, um, evolve: younger people believe in evolution at far higher rates than older ones


It seems obvious that it's not a good idea to put too much stock in witchcraft. But it turns out that 21 percent of Americans believe there are real sorcerors, conjurers, and warlocks out there. And that's just one of the several paranormal beliefs common among Americans, according to Gallup: 41 percent believe in ESP, 32 percent in ghosts, and a quarter in astrology. In fairness, the numbers in this poll are a little old—they date back to 2005. But then again, if people haven't changed their mind since the Enlightenment, it's not clear another half decade would make much difference.

From Facebook to faith: that's how a spurious rumor became part of the national dialogue. On Facebook, Sarah Palin wrote in August 2009 that Obama would institute a "death panel" as part of health-care reform. Soon pundits and politicians were demagoguing the issue into common currency. Even in August 2010, one year after the initial burst and five months after health reform was signed into law, the belief lingers. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, four in 10 Americans mistakenly believe the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act creates a panel that makes decisions about end-of-life care.


Even years after claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction or had links to the September 11 attacks had been debunked, not all Americans were convinced. In a June 2007 NEWSWEEK poll, four years after the invasion of Iraq, 41 percent believed Saddam was involved in 9/11—even though President Bush had said otherwise as early as September 2003. Wild views on 9/11 are in fact still rampant. In September 2009, Public Policy Polling found that a quarter of Democrats suspected Bush had something to do with the attacks. Meanwhile, many Americans also remain convinced that Saddam had WMDs, even though inspectors haven't found any in the seven years since the invasion. Still, as of 2006, half of Americans believed that, according to Harris. Who knows where they got that idea?

Didn't we clear this one up in the 16th century? Copernicus be damned, 20 percent of Americans were still sure in 1999 that the sun revolved around the Earth. Gallup, the pollster that conducted the study, gamely tried to dress it up by celebrating the fact that "four out of five Americans know Earth revolves around the sun," but we're not buying.

It's hard to imagine what inspired the pollsters at Zogby to ask the question, but the answer is striking: in a 2006 poll, more than three quarters of Americans could name at least two of the seven dwarfs, while not quite a quarter could name two members of the Supreme Court. NEWSWEEK's response is a split decision, if you will: on the one hand, Disney is as much a symbol of America as the high court, and those dwarfs are adorable. On the other hand, it should be easy to name only two out of a pool of nine options. Objection sustained!

Lost? Don't ask an American. Sixty-three percent of young Americans can't find Iraq on a map, despite the ongoing U.S involvement there. Nine out of 10 can't find Afghanistan—even if you give them the advantage of a map limited to Asia. And more than a third of Americans of any age can't identify the continent that's home to the Amazon River, the world's largest.

What a bunch of knuckleheads: according to Zogby, the majority of Americans—three in four—can correctly identify Larry, Curly, and Moe as the Three Stooges. Only two out of five respondents, however, can correctly identify the executive, legislative, and judicial branches as the three wings of government.


Who needs constitutional constructionism? Not one in three Americans, apparently: that's the proportion that said in a 2008 First Amendment Center poll that the constitutional right to freedom of religion was never meant to apply to groups most folks think are extreme or fringe—a 10 percent increase from 2000. In 2007, two out of five Americans told the FAC that teachers should be allowed to lead prayers in public schools. You can see several years of the reports here.

Opponents of President Obama have been spreading false rumors about his religion for quite some time. Recently, however, it seems that the number of Americans who believe these untruths is on the rise. Among respondents to a Pew poll, 18 percent believed Obama was a Muslim, up from 11 percent in March 2009. A Time magazine poll last week found similar results: 24 percent believed he was a Muslim, while only 47 percent correctly identified him as a Christian. There's some evidence that the best indicator of belief that Obama is a Muslim is opposing him politically, casting doubt on the accuracy of the results. Then again, it wouldn't be the craziest thing Americans believe, would it?

Crackpot wrote:There is hope tho Gob just look at how few of us think the Navy should be run like a protection racket.

Crackpot wrote:There is hope tho Gob just look at how few of us think the Navy should be run like a protection racket.