The Left and Obama's Approval Ratings

I noticed this evening that Joan Walsh of Salon.com, an Obama cheerleader if there ever was one, is writing about the 15% rise in president obama's approval ratings from 41% to 53%. Yes, I know that 41% to 53% is a twelve point difference, but Joan announced it as a 15% change. Apparently Joan Walsh never learned arithmatic (although her self esteem is high.) Since the poll Walsh cited was the NBC poll, I decided to check to see what other pollsters were showing. I went to the Rasmussen daily presidential approval tracking poll. The Rasmussen poll is take every day in a consistent manner. While some criticize Rasmussen as a Republican pollster because he appears frequently on Fox News, his poll should show movement if obama's approval really has soared. Here is what I found:

As of this morning, 51% of likely voters disapprove of Obama's performance and 48% approve. That 48% approval is within 5% of the number in the NBC poll. I then went back to see where the number had been over time. On January 3, the first poll of the year, the numbers were 47% approve and 52% disapprove, essentially the same as the current numbers. I went back further. On Thanksgiving, the numbers were 48% approve and 51% disapprove. On Election day, the numbers were 48% approve and 51% disapprove. A month earlier on October 3rd, the numbers were 47% approve and 52% disapprove. On September 1, the numbers were 51 % disapprove and 48% approve. In other words, Obama's approval numbers have not moved in any meaningful way. Oh sure, there were some polls during that time when the numbers moved up to 54 or 55% disapproval, but they kept coming back to the level currently shown. The numbers also swung the other way on occassion; Obama's approval went over 50% for one day just before Christmas, but the numbers then came back to the current levels.

So what does this all mean? Personally, I wonder who was included in the NBC poll. Did they fix the results to help Obama by including more Democrats than usual? Such tactics are not unusual. The AP just released a poll on healthcare which purports to show that the public strongly supports Obamacare; they fixed that result by oversampling Democrats by roughly 10% based upon professed party identification and even more based upon likely voters. It may be true that obama has seen a gain of a few percentage points in his approval during the last month. It does not show up in the Rasmussen poll, but it could be there. One thing, however is certain: there was no 15% (or 12%) rise in his actual approval numbers.