The Washington Post and the Pew Research Center conducted a poll yesterday that shows President Obama’s job approval rating is 56 percent, “an increase of nine percentage points over April polls by Post-ABC News and Pew. That is the highest approval rating for the president in either poll since 2009.”
There’s also been a clear increase in public satisfaction with the way things are going in the United States, although by a margin of nearly 2-1, Americans are still dissatisfied with the direction of the country.
The president gets big bounces on dealing with Afghanistan, with his approval rating soaring to 60 percent, and on handling the threat of terrorism, where he recorded a career high of 69 percent.
The president gets big bounces on dealing with Afghanistan, with his approval rating soaring to 60 percent, and on handling the threat of terrorism, where he recorded a career high of 69 percent.
The Post compares Obama’s job-approval bump to the ephemeral jump in Bush’s poll numbers following the capture of Saddam Hussein:
the nine-point increase in his overall approval rating is on par with the six-point increase in Bush’s numbers in the weeks following the capture of Saddam Hussein in Iraq in December 2003.
Meanwhile, CNN shows Obama’s job approval rating has ticked up just 1 point, to 52 percent.
It seems to me that even the 9-point bump in the Post poll is far too small to provide Obama with any sort of a sustained boost in his job approval rating over the long-term. But time will tell.
