President Obama's overall approval rating remained high and relatively steady over the past week, as he ratcheted up his efforts to push the $800 billion-plus economic stimulus legislation through Congress.
The rolling 3-day average in the Gallup organization's daily tracking poll reported Sunday showed 64 percent of respondents approved by Obama's performance since he took office nearly three weeks ago, while 22 percent disapproved. This amounted to a slight downtick in approval, from 66 percent last Monday, and a slight bump in disapproval, from 19 percent. Yet the plus-42 gap between approval and disapproval would be the envy of most politicians.
That might include Republicans in Congress -- the vast majority of whom have so far steadfastly opposed the stimulus legislation, based on their contention that it contains too much spending, and that much of that spending would be wasteful and would not stimulate the economy in the near-term.
While some Republicans believe their fight against the major expansion of government spending has given them some political high ground, a separate Gallup poll released Monday showed Obama holding a big advantage in public opinion on the handling of the stimulus measure.
The survey conducted Feb. 6-7 showed that 67 percent approved of how Obama has "handled the government's efforts to pass an economic stimulus bill," while 25 percent disapproved and 8 percent had no opinion. By comparison, the Republicans in Congress drew a 31 percent approval rating on the stimulus bill while 58 percent disapproved and 11 percent had no opinion.
In the Gallup survey the Democratic majority in Congress was in the middle and just slightly in positive territory, with 48 percent of respondents approving, 42 percent disapproving and 10 percent stating no opinion. The survey of 1,018 adults across the nation had a statistical margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
The public's dour outlook on the nation's recession-burdened economy may be buying Obama a bit of extended political leeway. The Gallup tracking poll measures a variety of indicators of the public's mood on the economy, all of which show extremely low levels of optimism and some of which eroded over the course of last week.
On consumer confidence, 79 percent of respondents said they were negative - up 5 percentage points from the previous Monday - while 3 percent (down from 4 percent) said they were positive. Given that the poll has a 3-point margin of error, that positive figure really can't get much lower.
Those saying economic conditions were excellent or good slipped from 10 percent last Monday to 7 percent by week's end. Those describing the economic outlook as "getting worse" bumped up from 77 percent to 81 percent.
Opinion on the overall "state of the union" remained nearly unchanged, but that's not good news. The Sunday figure was 15 percent satisfied (16 percent last Monday) and 81 percent dissatisfied (no change).
The Obama approval number is in sync with other recent independent national polls. A USA Today/Gallup poll taken Jan. 30-Feb. 1 - a different survey produced by Gallup - showed the approval/disapproval split at 64-25. A CBS News poll taken Feb. 2-4 showed 62 percent approval to 15 percent disapproval.
In a separate poll released Monday by CNN/Opinion Research Corp., , 76 percent of those questioned approve of Obama is performing his duties, while 23 percent disapproved. In the same poll, aslight majority, 54 percent, favors the stimulus bill while 45 percent are opposed.
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