Obama and Expectations
Today’s Washington Post poll also gets at an issue I’ve been trying to raise relative to the tea party phenomenon. Is it actually the case that there’s some large group of people who are newly outraged by Barack Obama’s conduct in office, or are the people who don’t like Obama today basically just the same people who didn’t like him a year ago. One question the Post asked was: “Would you say Obama is doing a better job as president than you expected, a worse job, or what? Is that much better/worse or somewhat better/worse?”
The results:
Basically no tidal wave of disappointment with Obama here. More people claim to be pleasantly surprised by his presidenting than say he’s done worse than they thought. And of course many of the disappointed will be progressives who blame him for not being more effective at pushing progressive policy through.
31 Responses to “Obama and Expectations”
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September 14th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
Actually, I’d imagine that the tea-baggers would respond as either “somewhat worse” (since “he’s even more of a socialist radical than even we’d thought he’d be” is not an option) or “somewhat better” (since “he’s not turned the US into a Euro-weenie-style commie, socialist dictatorship” is not an option).
How many tea-party-protesters really expected Obama to be someone with whom they’d agree but now all of the sudden don’t? Of course, there are always a few who will say “I thought Obama would be wonderful but it turns out he’s a socialist pinko” and the nature of news is such that a “man bites dog” story such as this will get more news play than anything else, but why would anybody expect that would be the norm?
Really, though, this chart doesn’t tell the whole story. You would really need to know how many people in each category (as appropriate) are, e.g., progressives who wished Obama would be more liberal, conservatives who think Obama is going too far, or what not. Maybe this was done in the survey?
September 14th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
You say this like “reality” matters.
September 14th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
And of course many of the disappointed will be progressives who blame him for not being more effective at pushing progressive policy through.
I doubt it, actually–some will be, of course, but I would bet the vast bulk of the “disappointed” are people who were rooting against Obama’s agenda to begin with and simply won’t say anything even relatively positive about his job performance in response to a poll. Conversely, I suspect most dissatisfied progressives wouldn’t claim to be surprised and would instead be more likely to fall into the 25% “as expected” category not reported in the graph.
September 14th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
Ummm…did you even look at the same poll that they did in April? His numbers have really dropped. He Went from 54% Better than Expected to 42% Better Than Expected. His Worse Than Expected rose from 18% to 31%. You might want to tell all the facts next time.
September 14th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
Does the survey data include what party the respondents self-identify with? Or whether they claim to have voted for Obama?
I would be interested to see that broken down by political affiliation (or some proxy measure) – are liberals “pleasantly surprised”? Is the progressive disappointment overstated? Are conservatives happy?
I think the trend will be very different among different populations.
September 14th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
Somewhat Betters are moderate Republicans/independents and Democratic cheerleaders. Much Betters are everyone in the pharma, insurance and financial industries. The Much Worse contingent is everyone who convinced themselves that Obama was a liberal.
September 14th, 2009 at 3:43 pm
How did you manage to look at this fact and conclude that it refutes anything Matt wrote?
Please, quote the sentence from Matt’s post that is contradicted by the data or provided.
Or, alternately, stop bothering those of us who can read a chart.
September 14th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
Politicians are generally more popular before they do stuff than after they do stuff. If they do good stuff, they might be more popular than if they had done bad stuff. But they’ll still be less popular than before they had a chance to do anything at all.
September 14th, 2009 at 3:54 pm
****DLC Propaganda alert****
September 14th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
That poll is kind of like an Obama speech or campaign promise… you can read anything into you want (Unless of course you look at the TREND like readthewholething did in which case it takes on undeniable meaning
September 14th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Right… the undeniable meaning that 12% of the population has gone from being happy to unhappy with Obama over the past 5 months. And what does that mean? No one knows.
September 14th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
1) I think what is important is how INTENSE is a negetive or positive reaction.
2) Healthcare is hugely important to the elderly and likely to be a major factor with how they vote next November. By contrast, it seems of lesser importance to the younger and middle-aged voters.
That may CHANGE , however, if they experience negative impacts ( charges for mandatory coverage, worst service, higher deductibles in the next few years and associate them with Obama.) Obama’s attempt to reform Healthcare sets him up to take the blame for adverse developments that would have occurred even if he had not been elected. He OWNS this problem now — and I’m not sure there will be POSITIVE developments for which the voters will give him and the Democrats credit.
Re the elderly, the news for Obama is not good.
From http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/13/AR2009091302962_2.html?hpid=topnews&sub=AR&sid=ST2009091400007
————
“The loss of support among seniors has been a critical component of the issue. In June, seniors trusted Obama more than they did the Republicans in Congress by a margin of 62 to 24 percent; now, 44 percent side with the GOP, 39 percent with Obama.
Majorities of seniors approved of Obama’s job performance consistently from his first months in office through mid-July, but his rating among seniors has since dropped to 38 percent, with 57 percent disapproving. Over all age groups, 54 percent approve of his performance, while 43 percent disapprove, the lowest marks of his presidency. ”
September 14th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
These numbers are all too small and too close to mean anything. If this scale went up to 100, there would be next to no real differences. 2 18’s, a 24, and a 13/12.
This really says whatever you want to say. Assuming most of the unnacounted for did decide, and that “about the same” was an option, that was the highest response. The most obvious point would probably be “Opinions mixed”.
September 14th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
Basically no tidal wave of disappointment with Obama here
========================================================
The tidal wave is the trend. Yglesias is selectively showing the numbers.
There is a big deterioration since April. Compare the Better Than/Worse Than/As Expected between the two polls.
9.12.09 42/31/25
4.24.09 54/18/23
The “as expected” is virtually the same.
September 14th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
RE DTM at 3: “Conversely, I suspect most dissatisfied progressives wouldn’t claim to be surprised and would instead be more likely to fall into the 25% “as expected” category not reported in the graph.”
———–
What bullshit.
Go to Firedoglake, Kos, Olbermann, Huffington Post etc and see how many are singing happy socialist songs. It’s not too late for Obama to salvage things but people ain’t happy.
From http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/11/head-count-house-progress_n_283756.html
“Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), a member of CPC leadership, estimates that eighty to 100 members will make the pledge. The progressive caucus met on Thursday, following the president’s speech, and members repeated their commitment to seeing the public option included in the bill, said Ellison.
Grijalva guessed the whip count would be lower than Ellison’s estimate. “We need firm votes,” he said.
A senior administration official said Wednesday that killing the bill for not including a public option would be “tragic.” Centrist and conservative Democrats have expressed frustration at the forcefulness of the support for the public option, arguing that it’s a distraction from the broader package. “
September 14th, 2009 at 4:32 pm
I love the fact that I loom this large in your mind, ricardo.
And yet, it doesn’t even mean that. The undeniable meaning of the fact that 12% of the population – 12% whose original expectations of Obama we don’t know – moved from considering Obama’s performance to be better than expected to be being worse than expected.
The undeniable meaning of a third-order function, for a set of numbers whose values we don’t know.
September 14th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
Did 6% go from ecstatic to happy? Did 4% go from pessimistic to living in a bunker?
We have no way of knowing.
What we know is that the margin by which people pleasantly surprised by Obama’s performance outweigh people who are unpleasantly surprised by Obama’s performance is in the double-digits, even as the margin has shrunk.
September 14th, 2009 at 4:42 pm
It doesn’t matter a damn bit what people say on the internet. PUMA’s had like twenty blogs and they popped up everywhere on the internet threatening doom and then it turned out every PUMA had a no quarter account and they were statistically meaningless.
September 14th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
First of all, a lot of people are probably just lying. People who expected six months ago that they would be in reeducation camps by now, and who aren’t in reeducation camps, aren’t going to respond that Obama is much better than they expected because he’s only planning to impose socialist health care. To get any accurate measure of opinion change you’d need to ask people their opinion of Obama at one time, and then later ask the same people their opinion of Obama at another time. Longitudinal studies are very rare in public opinion polling – in fact I don’t think I’ve ever heard of one – but they’re really the only way to measure whose opinion has changed and by how much.
Second, without some means of distinguishing between “Obama is too liberal” and “Obama isn’t liberal enough” the fact of discontent with him, even if proved, is pretty meaningless. He’s drawing plenty of fire from a wide variety of political positions, so without further polling of the discontented, it’s hard to pin down what’s actually going on here.
I would be interested in seeing the results of a question along the lines of “What is the most important way in which Obama has done better/worse than you expected?” but of course it’s somewhat difficult and subjective to collect open-ended responses into bins and count up the most popular answers.
September 14th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
The implication of the undeniable trend is this:
Unless swift actions are taken (and supporting substantive healthcare reform and wall street re-regulation would be a good start) the “admin” might have to resort to (GW) bushleague tactics (sending white powder laced envelopes to the office’s of obstacles and closely monitor all flights of same into and out of DC) in order to accomplish “anything” with their remaining three years. This I would not put past any chicago sidley-austin dead peasant life insurance mob (for all we know it may already be the motis operandi) but what a despicable way to run a government. What an effective way to ruin a political party (just look at the repugs).
Trust is hard to come by once its been lost.
September 14th, 2009 at 5:44 pm
****DLC Propaganda alert****
I too am curious as to who signs joe from Lowell’s checks.
He spends a great deal of time in the comments section
but perhaps joe is just a bored knowledge worker or unemployed bankster.
September 15th, 2009 at 1:47 am
You people saying that joe is paid by the DLC and that Matt is in the employ of Rahm Emmanuel need to chill. You’re at a 10, we need you at about a 2. There’s no call for all this holier-than-thou-ness and acrimony to be thrown about, especially since most of the people you’re attacking are generally in agreement with you, they just don’t see the need to grab a paper bag and hyperventilate into it every 30 seconds. Some of you just need to take a time out, smoke some weed or grab a glass of wine, and then remember that y’all are on the same side.
September 15th, 2009 at 5:42 pm
I certainly am in the much worse category. I didn’t expect miracles and I’ve known he hates the blogosphere for well over a year, but I didn’t except to be shit upon the extent I have been.
Oh well.
September 15th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
[...] know how there is this crazy tidal wave of dissatisfaction with Obama? Well, according to a Washington Post poll, it is just not the case. Sure, the folks that were against him are still against him. The [...]
September 15th, 2009 at 5:48 pm
I would probably be “slightly worse”, but only because hopes for him were astronomical. It varies by topic quite a bit. Civil rights (gay rights, wiretapping, right to a trial) and prosecuting war crimes have been the areas where he has most disappointed me. His foreign policy has been exemplary, from the cairo speech and other things, which i expected. He has also moved much more aggressively on the environment and healthcare than i’d expected. He gets an incomplete for reforming the finance industry though.
September 15th, 2009 at 5:50 pm
There is no “tidal wave” to be seen here. Back in April, during the height of Obama’s honeymoon, 77% thought he was better/as expected. Now, 67% think he’s better/as expected. This is little different from his approval ratings, which have likewise dropped roughly 10% during that same period.
Absolutely none of this is the least bit surprising. It is the standard drop from “honeymoon/first love” status back down to earth.
September 15th, 2009 at 5:53 pm
I was just telling my girlfriend yesterday how I thought Obama was a lot worse than I expected. And she reminded me that on our second date (which was a couple months before BHO received the nomination), I said I thought Obama would prove ineffectual because he was committed to bipartisanship. I couldn’t have answered that question in a meaningful way – better than I expected as of 8/1/08? 12/1/08? 2/1/09?
September 15th, 2009 at 6:00 pm
Where is the option for “exactly as I expected”?
September 15th, 2009 at 6:11 pm
[...] charts the latest WaPo [...]
September 15th, 2009 at 10:35 pm
Great poll: measuring subjective assessment of subjective intent. Meaningless.
September 16th, 2009 at 10:52 am
What about a catgory: “Doing a good job under conditions HE INHERITED?” I like that one.