A milestone or a millstone?

It is way too early to put much stock in the polling data regarding the 2012 presidential election. Right now, the common view among the punditry seems to be that president Obama should be highly favored for re-election. There is, however, polling data that ought to give those pundits pause before they repeat the easy re-election mantra. Specifically, I refer to the president's job approval ratings. Real Clear Politics lists all of the recent polls and keeps a running average of the latest ones. The RCP average eliminates many of the jumps and falls which appear in individual polls; after all, by combining polls, the sample size is increased from 1000 to 8000 people, thereby improving accuracy. Further, if an individual poll has a bias towards one side or the other, the combination eliminates nearly all of that bias. As of today, the RCP average shows that Obama's job approval rating is 45.4% while 50.0 percent of the population disapprove. This is Obama's lowest rating since the month before the November elections. Indeed, all of the bounce that Obama got from reaching the tax compromise and speaking of the need for civility after the attack against congresswoman Giffords has evaporated. Also important is that each of the seven recent polls that were combined to reach the RCP average showes Obama with more people disapproving than approving. Those seven polls include ones taken by both Republican and Democrat pollsters.

Another interesting point in these polls is that Obama's approval numbers have strongly tanked since Obama made his slashing negative "budget" speech last week in which he attacked Republican proposals to cut spending and outlined his own vague plan for major tax increases coupled with certain undefined spending cuts. If Obama and his advisers thought that the budget speech would appeal to the majority of the American people, they were mistaken. On the other hand, if the advisers thought that the speech would allow Obama to secure his base amoung the far left of the Democrat party so that he could later reach out to moderates and independents, then they may have miscalculated the extent of damage that the speech did to Obama's standing with these groups. After all, at a certain point, folks will just tune out Obama and it will be too late for him to recover.