Poll Tracker

It marked the second consecutive day that the index held at plus-19, a score Obama last reached in a poll published Feb. 5. It also marked a rather sharp rebound from the plus-11 score (36 percent strongly approve, 25 percent strongly disapprove) in the poll, published Feb. 8, that marked the low point in a presidency that is barely more than three weeks old.

Obama's Rasmussen index has slipped from the plus-30 he received in a tracking poll published Jan. 22, in the immediate afterglow of his inauguration. But it is still well above the plus-8 score he received in the poll published Nov. 6 in the aftermath of his hard-fought victory, by a 7 percentage-point popular vote margin, over Republican John McCain.

The overall approval rating of 61 percent that Obama received in the Rasmussen poll published Thursday is in league with the numbers seen in most other recent independent poll. The Gallup tracking poll published Wednesday pegged Obama's approval rating at 63 percent. A Pew Research Center poll taken Feb. 4-8 produced a 64 percent job approval rating for Obama. The latest CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll, however, put Obama a step higher, with 76 percent job approval in a poll taken Feb. 7-8.

The Rasmussen poll indicates, though, that Obama will need to use his personal popularity if the economic stimulus bill is to overcome deep-seated public anxieties over a big increase in government spending. Among the Rasmussen respondents, 62 percent said they would have preferred more tax cuts and less government spending in the stimulus bill. The respondents tied at 43 percent on the question of whether the government would do too much or too little in response to the recession.