[Click Figure to Track/Compare Approval]If you haven't seen it already, USA Today has a neat little gadget up today using Gallup data that allows you to track President Obama's approval rating and compare it to past presidents all the way back to Truman (when Gallup's efforts commenced). You can zoom in and out on the time series by moving the handles at the bottom of the graph and you can also compare presidents side by side. This has already been used as fodder among the political class (believe it or not).
This one is worth keeping tabs on as we approach next year's midterm cycle, and obviously, 2012.
[Honestly, someone who has more time than I do now should take the data on the last eleven presidents and use that to project where Obama will end up. That isn't particularly accurate, as things are bound to come up that are unique to Obama's administration, but it would be an interesting baseline, nonetheless.]
Hat tip to Josh Tucker at The Monkey Cage for the link. Tucker, by the way, is calling on those who frequent TMC (read: political scientists) to put Obama's current position and the honeymoon effect generally into context.
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3 comments:
I love this chart. It is great. The Clinton curve is particularly interesting as it is an anomaly from the other curves.
Ronald Reagan disagrees to some extent, Rob. Other than Iran-Contra, Reagan actually tracks pretty closely to Clinton's path. His closing push on the tail end of 1988 didn't hurt. Surprisingly, the stock market upheaval in 1987 didn't really drag the 40th president down much if any.
It really is a fascinating gadget. George W. Bush against Clinton is another interesting comparison. Obama probably wouldn't mind ending up somewhere in between those two.
Yes, there are some similarities between Clinton and Reagan, but Clinton tends to be less volatile and to track up, while Reagan has more peaks and troughs. I suspect that the Obama curve will probably track more like Reagan than any of his other predecessors.
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