Voters still have more confidence in President Obama than they do in either party in Congress, but that’s not saying much. According to a new Washington Post/ABC poll, confidence in Obama’s decision-making has fallen to the lowest point of his presidency, with 58% of respondents saying they have “just some” or no confidence that the president will “make the right decisions for the country’s future.”
Voters’ view of Congressional Democrats? 68% say they have “just some” or no confidence in them. They have the least confidence in Congressional Republicans with 72% saying they have no or “just some” confidence in the party to make the decisions that will improve things in this country.
Despite the low confidence in the existing Congressional GOP, voters in the poll seem more eager than ever to hand control of Capitol Hill back to the Republicans, according to the Post‘s story on the poll.
“Those most likely to vote in the midterms prefer the GOP over continued Democratic rule by a sizable margin” of 56-41, the paper reports.
Among all registered voters surveyed the picture is somewhat different: 47% say they’ll vote Republican and 46% say they’ll vote for a Democrat. That dead heat is in keeping with the TPM Poll Average of the Congressional Generic Ballot, which shows the GOP ahead by a margin of 45.4-43.1.
Asked about the poll this morning at a breakfast for reporters hosted by the Christian Science Monitor, Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) told TPMDC that though the numbers look bad, there’s still time for the Democrats to turn things around.
“Tides change in politics with great speed,” he said. “Things change a great deal in a matter of weeks or months.”
Levin said the poll “may be accurate” but that it should not affect the way the Democrats go about making law in the government they still control.
Democrats have suggested that despite how bleak things appear for them in mainstream media reports, there’s still room for them to maintain their majority in Congress by targeting, among other things, the somewhat scattered response from some in the GOP to the BP oil spill.
But other numbers from the poll suggest that voters are prepared to overlook their confidence problems with the GOP in order to battle Obama. Fifty-one percent of registered voters said it was “more important” for Republicans to be in charge of Congress to “act as a check” on Obama’s policy moves. Forty-three percent said “it’s more important to have the Democrats in charge to support Obama’s policies.”
As for Obama himself, more voters still approve of the overall job the president is doing than disapprove in the Post poll, but not by much. Fifty percent said they approve of Obama’s job as president, while 46% said they disapprove. The TPM Poll Average for Obama’s job approval shows 46.7% of voters approve of Obama’s job performance while 48.4% disapprove.
On most other specific job measures — the economy and the hot-button issue of financial reform, for example — less than 50% respondents to the Post poll said they approve of the way Obama is handling things.
As Politico‘s Andy Barr noted, there was just one area where Obama got above 50% approval from respondents to the Post poll:
“Obama only got a higher than 50 percent approval rating for handling of his duties as commander in chief, for which 55 percent give him good marks.”
The Washington Post/ABC surveyed 1,288 adults between July 7-11. The margin of error for the poll is 3.5%
