The political damage absorbed by President Obama and his signature legislative achievement appears to have subsided, a poll released Tuesday found.
According to the latest Pew Research Center/USA Today poll, Obama’s approval rating has finally ended what’s been a five-month dip, although his standing is still considerably lower than where it was at the start of the year. The poll showed 45 percent of Americans approve of the job Obama is doing, compared with 49 percent who disapprove.
While that’s lower than the 55 percent approval rating Obama boasted in a Pew poll a year ago, it’s essentially the same as where it stood before the Affordable Care Act’s flawed rollout took a huge political toll.
In September, before both the government shutdown and the launch of Obamacare, Pew found that 44 percent approved of Obama while 49 percent disapproved.
Tuesday’s poll showed ratings for the Affordable Care Act also returning to pre-rollout levels, though the law still remains unpopular. Forty-one percent said they approve of the law, while 55 percent said they disapprove — virtually identical to Pew’s poll in September, when 42 percent approved and 53 percent disapproved.
It’s perhaps a sign that the political fallout from the law’s bumpy launch has abated. Despite a first month filled with much-publicized technical glitches, popularity for Obamacare remained static in October. That changed in November after Obama was maligned for wrongly promising consumers that they could keep their current health plans under the law.
But polls also indicated that Americans weren’t ready to give up on the health care law and, as the White House desperately reminded reporters, Republicans haven’t exactly been surging in the polls.
In fact, the Pew/USA Today poll showed that half of the country has a “good deal” or “fair amount” of confidence in Obama when it comes to doing “the right thing” on health policy, compared with just 32 percent who said the same of GOP leaders.
However another poll, released by Quinnipiac University on Tuesday, showed Obama’s approval rating hitting a new low of 38 percent.
Read the full Pew poll below:
