President Obama has not had the greatest run in the polls on handling the economy. But new data from ABC News and the Washington Post shows that if Americans have to chose between him and congressional GOP on creating new jobs, then it’s not really a contest.
Obama has jumped fifteen points ahead of congressional Republicans on who Americans trust more the create jobs following a Presidential push for his jobs bill and deficit reduction passage. The poll shows that 49 percent of Americans trust Obama more on the issue, while 34 percent go for the congressional GOP. Just a month ago that number was locked at 40 for each, after a summer of downward markets and an almost-default, which was quickly followed up with palatable disgust toward policymakers in Washington.
It’s not all good news for Obama in the poll: he has only a one point lead, 43 – 42, over Republicans on the question of who is better to handle the overall economy, and the GOP has a seven point lead on taxes, 46 – 39. But as TPM reported following the arduous summer, DC politicians of all stripes were racing to change the conversation to jobs. Now that it has, this data seems to show that the President has gained the upper hand with his proposals and sales job outside of the beltway.
Polls have also shown that Americans support most of the components of the jobs plan, along with the so-called “Buffett Rule,” which seeks to raise taxes on those with more than a million dollars in income. Those results are replicated within the ABC/WaPo numbers, as 52 percent of Americans support the plan versus 36, and the “Buffett Rule” gets 75 percent support against 23. 58 percent also think the jobs plan would help create jobs, which seems to show where the underlying support for Obama on the job creation issue comes from: a majority of Americans actually like the specifics of the plan.
A memo accompanying the survey put it like this:
One take-away from these results is that Obama’s likely to shout out his jobs plan often and loudly in the months ahead, for the simple reason that, in a presidency short of punching power, this one’s working. Another is that the Republicans have their own resonance on taxes (the question of millionaires aside), as well as on right-sizing the government.
And the third is that Obama, in the election year ahead, may try his best not to run against his eventual Republican opponent – but, a la Harry Truman, against the Republicans in Congress.
The poll used 1,002 live telephone interviews with adult Americans conducted from Sept. 29th to Oct. 2nd. It has a sampling error of four percent.
