Even before the government releases what is expected to be another dismal jobs report today, President Obama is getting poor grades from Americans on his handling of the economy.
Only 38 percent of Americans approve of the way Obama has been dealing with the worst economic decline since the Great Depression, down from 45 percent in June, polls show. And with unemployment edging toward 10 percent and reports that businesses shed another 39,000 jobs in September, Obama’s woes are likely to get worse.
The continuing grim economic tidings only further dampen Democrats’ prospects for the Nov. 2 congressional elections, in which jobs and the economy consistently rate as voters’ top concerns and the election itself is widely viewed as a referendum on Obama’s leadership.
“When unemployment is still at 9.5-9.6 percent,” Obama said during a recent stop in New Jersey, “that gives an enormous advantage to whoever is not in power because they can simply point at the status quo regardless of causation and say, ‘You know what, it’s the folks who are in power that are at fault.'”
Obama’s overall approval ratings, which have dropped from around 56 percent in the beginning of the year to 44 percent three weeks before the elections, are so low that fellow Democrats found it encouraging when 52 percent of voters surveyed by CBS News said that Obama’s support for a candidate wouldn’t affect the way they vote.
“We’re not finished,” Obama told guests at a $34,000-a-plate fundraiser, “unless we lose sight of the game and we start sulking and sitting back.”
Obama in recent weeks has intensified his efforts to reach out to the people who propelled him into office, including young voters and Hispanics. And while a number of Democratic Party constituencies have expressed disappointment and doubts about Obama’s efforts on a variety of issues, from his failure to close the Guantanamo Bay detention camps and to introduce immigration reforms, 81 percent of Democrats still support him, a Gallup poll shows.
Trouble spots for Obama lurk among independents, a group that helped elect him but now only support him at a rate of 39 percent, according to Gallup.
George Edwards III, a political scientist at Texas A&M University, said independents may be a lost cause for Obama.
“What he can’t do, unfortunately for his side, is take all these independents leaning toward Republicans and turn them into independents leaning toward Democrats,” Edwards said. “That is the big problem for Democrats in this election.”
Obama also has less than majority approval in the Midwest and the South, among those over 50, regular churchgoers and among whites, according to Gallup.
Obama faces a particularly tough time among working-class white voters, according to new polling from the Associated Press-Gfk.
The poll found working-class white voters favor Republican candidates 58 percent to 36 percent, a 22 percentage-point gap.
