In recent polls, GOP limited to Southern comfort
By David Sarasohn, The Oregonian
October 22, 2009, 5:50PM
oregonlive.com
For months, Barack Obama’s national approval rating has been hovering in the low to mid-50s. The level is respectable — his predecessor hadn’t been there for his last three years — but not exactly intimidating, not exactly a number to make congressmen think they’d better get in line.
Like a temperature in the mid-50s, it’s respectable but not exciting.
But what if there’s another way to look at it, numbers suggesting that in the great bulk of the country, Obama is sufficiently popular that his own prospects, and his party’s, look considerably stronger?
That he was likely, once again, to be valedictorian of the Electoral College?
Overall, the numbers from Research 2000, a group that polls for the liberal blog Daily Kos as well as various newspapers, are similar to everyone else’s. Research 2000 has Obama’s favorable/unfavorable percentages at 55-37, while ABC News/Washington Post has them at 57-40, Fox at 55-41, Gallup at 56-40.
All close enough to fit around one table in the Margin of Error Saloon.
But Research 2000 then breaks its telephone polling down by region and finds Obama wildly unpopular in the South — 27 percent approval, 68 percent disapproval — but up by 67-24 in the rest of the country.
That includes an Obama advantage of 59-32 in the West, 62-30 in the Midwest and a thunderous 82-7 edge in the Northeast. On the Pennsylvania Turnpike east, Republicans are heading past minority status toward extinction.
With a strong position throughout the country outside the Confederacy, Obama actually casts a longer shadow than Gallup measures.
And then there’s the South.
“It’s almost like a different planet, in terms of how they view things,” Del Ali, president of Research 2000, said Thursday afternoon.
He thinks the striking difference is all about the thing we don’t want to talk about.
“I think the whole thing is race,” said Ali. “I think the majority of white voters in the South have a problem with Barack Obama due to race.”
Obama, he points out, began his presidency with approval ratings in the South in the 30s; Bill Clinton, with similar policy positions, started out in the 50s. Some other polling that Research 2000 did this summer found an equally curious comparison:
Outside the South, 90 percent of Americans think Obama was born in the United States. In the 12 states of the South — the Confederacy plus Kentucky — only 47 percent said they were certain of it.
For a candidate, people who think you were born in Kenya are a tough demographic to crack.
The same breakdown extends to party identity. Right now, Republicans are rejoicing in the low polling numbers for the Democratic Congress — of course, nobody ever likes Congress — and reminding themselves of the GOP takeover of both houses in 1994. With the Democratic Party getting only a 41 percent favorable to 51 percent unfavorable rating, it seems like an opportunity.
But Republicans win a favorable/unfavorable rating only in the South, 48 percent to 37 percent. In the West, the party is upside down 12 percent to 75 percent; in the Midwest, 10 percent to 78 percent; and in the Northeast, only 6 percent view the GOP favorably, against 87 percent unfavorably.
And that’s in the region where both George Bushes were born.
So sweeping Republican optimism about next year might be a little ahead of itself. Of course, with both the economy and health care uncertain, so might Democratic optimism.
“Voters are a lot more patient than a lot of people think they are,” said Ali, and if Obama gets a health care deal with a public option, his numbers might surge higher. But if a health care overhaul produces rapidly rising premiums, “people will be jumping very quickly.”
Still, the numbers do suggest another way of thinking about the president’s political position. Instead of having reasonably good numbers across the country, Obama could legitimately claim to be nationally quite popular, with a major regional weakness.
And in making that claim, he would not just be whistling “Dixie.” |
