In the run-up to health care reform’s passage, many people (including yours truly) predicted that the president’s approval ratings would see a bump once the bill passed. Bill Clinton went out on a limb and forecast a 10-point bounce. And in the days immediately following passage, Obama’s approval ratings did seem to nudge up a little.
More than a week later, however, Obama’s approval ratings seem to have been little changed:
Democrats who held out hopes that President Barack Obama’s health reform win would mean a quick boost to the party’s political fortunes are getting a reality check — a reminder that it takes more than one good week to shake up a year of sliding polls.
Obama and his health reform plan did get a bump in several surveys immediately after the House vote eight days ago — but the numbers in some of those polls flattened out, showing how difficult it will be for Obama to capitalize on reform, even after his top legislative goal cleared Congress.
Even the bounce for the plan itself has proven evanescent. A USA Today/Gallup poll immediately after passage found 49 percent favoring it versus 40 percent against, an improvement from earlier polls. But the newest USA Today/Gallup poll now finds a 47-50 favor/oppose split. An aggregate of polls on health care finds little movement from the pre-passage days.
How to read the numbers? For one thing, it reveals just how divisive the health reform debate has been. After months of Republicans demonizing the plan as the next stage in Obama’s grand totalitarian scheme, it’s no surprise that a week-plus of good news cycles has done little to change public opinion.
But perhaps the more important lesson here is just how much the economy overrides everything right now. With the employment situation still dismal and the recovery yet to manifest itself on Main Street, the public mood is still understandably sour.
In a blog post yesterday, Charles Franklin repeated an observation he made earlier — that Obama’s public approval ratings, and the forces influencing it, track very closely with what we saw with Ronald Reagan:
The short version is both come in with inherited economic troubles that don’t turn around miraculously in the first 24 months. Both replace deeply unpopular predecessors, and suffer from high expectations in comparison. And both set out to dramatically change the direction of national policy. Reagan suffered substantial losses in the House in his first midterm (26 seats lost), and Obama looks headed to similar if not larger losses in 2010.
So how is the analogy holding up? In approval terms, still quite well. The two continue to track rather well. Obama has occasionally been slightly below and recently slightly above Reagan’s trend, but the parallel movement remains striking. Likewise, their relative location compared to other first term post-war presidents continues to drive home the point that these have been (so far) among the lowest approval ratings in the first 24 months.
One bright spot for Democrats is that the economy seems to be turning earlier for Obama than it did for Reagan. Even though unemployment has not yet begun its descent, the upward trend in GDP is a hopeful sign. (According to Franklin, GDP is “consistently a better predictor of midterm outcomes than is unemployment,” counterintuitive though that may seem.)
The other bright spot for Dems comes from a closer look at the polling numbers. Though the overall numbers have seen little improvement, Democratic enthusiasm seems to have been buoyed by health reform’s passage. In a midterm election, when traditionally low turnout puts even greater pressure on a party to bring its faithful to the polls, a depressed base would have been disastrous for Democrats. Obviously, the Republican rank-and-file will be fired up for November. But now, at least, the Democrats can make a fight of it with its own energized base.
