March 19, 2014

Obama’s Approval Rating Is Remarkably Steady No Matter What Happens


Jonathan Bernstein writes today that President Obama’s approval rating has pulled ahead of George Bush’s approval rating at this point in his presidency. “This is not to say Obama is doing well,” he warns. “Unless his recent improvement gathers steam, he’s going to be a drag on Democrats in November, though he won’t be as big a drag as Bush was for his party in the 2006 midterms.”

This prompted me to click the link and check out Obama’s approval rating in the HuffPollster’s polling average. This may not be a surprise to any of you, but I don’t follow Obama’s polls very closely and I was a bit startled by how consistent his ratings have been. The chart below shows Obama’s average approval over the past four years. It hovers around 47 percent, and it hasn’t moved more than four points above or below that in the entire time. Right now he’s about three points below his long-term mean, and as usual, he’s reverting to it after sinking a bit during his annus horribilis of 2013.

I don’t really have a point to make here. I’m just surprised that his numbers have been so steady for so long, so I thought I’d share.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

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