A new survey from Pew Research Center released Wednesday indicated that President Barack Obama has largely weathered the controversies that have consumed the country’s attention as of late — a far cry from a survey released earlier this week that showed his approval rating had dipped sharply.
The Pew poll showed that 49 percent of Americans approve of the job Obama is doing while 43 percent said they disapproved. Those numbers are virtually identical to Pew’s poll in May, when 51 percent said they approved of the President’s job performance and 43 percent said they disapproved.
But Pew’s latest runs counter to a CNN/ORC International poll released on Monday that found an 8-point drop to Obama’s approval rating in the last month. The CNN/ORC poll also showed that Obama’s support among Americans under the age of 30 had plummeted by 17 points since May.
While some pointed to the CNN/ORC numbers as evidence that Obama had been weakened by news of the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups and the National Security Agency’s sweeping surveillance programs, others such as polling expert Mark Blumenthal cautioned that the survey may have exaggerated the President’s actual decline.
According to Pew, Obama’s approval rating is seven points higher than George W. Bush’s in June of 2005 but five points lower than Bill Clinton’s in June of 1997.
The PollTracker Average illustrates the movement to Obama’s approval rating since last year.
