WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama’s job approval rating has plunged to a dismal 39 percent, the lowest of his presidency, as increasing numbers disapprove of his handling of the nation’s ailing economy, according to a new McClatchy-Marist poll.
The low job approval rating among registered voters, down from 44 percent last month, suggests enormous trouble for a president who faces re-election in 14 months.
The 52 percent who disapprove of Obama’s performance represents the first time that number has climbed over 50 percent.
“These numbers could typically spell doom for an incumbent,” poll director Lee Miringoff said. Even the president’s remedies for the economy are being received coolly. One-third approved and 61 percent disapproved of his handling of the economy. Sixty-one percent said the worst was yet to come for the economy, while 64 percent said Obama’s $447-billion jobs plan, which he’s been pushing hard for days, didn’t go far enough.
The poll surveyed 1,042 adults—825 of them registered voters—on Tuesday and Wednesday. The margin of error for the entire sample is plus or minus 3 percentage points; for registered voters, it’s 3.5 percentage points. The president unveiled his jobs plan, which faces trouble in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and among liberal Democrats, before a joint session of Congress on September 8. On Monday he detailed a longer-term program for reducing deficits.
Congress is expected to begin considering the jobs package next month. The plan is aimed at bringing down the nation’s 9.1-percent unemployment rate and boosting an economy that’s barely growing. It would cut Social Security payroll taxes dramatically and increase spending on infrastructure and education, and it would impose higher taxes on the wealthy by limiting their itemized deductions.
Few see the plan as the antidote for the staggering economy. Seventy-eight percent of Democrats said it didn’t go far enough. Fifty-four percent of Republicans and 59 percent of independents felt the same way.
Add that to the ongoing pessimism about the economy, and Obama’s personal numbers fell. At the start of his presidency, from April to October 2009, his approval numbers ranged from 53 to 56 percent. He won 52.9 percent of the popular vote in November 2008. The president pushed a huge stimulus package through Congress within weeks of his inauguration, but the slow economic recovery eventually took its political toll. Obama’s job approval rating fell to 46 percent in December 2009 and hasn’t gone above 48 percent since.
McClatchy Newspapers
In Photo: President Barack Obama walks away from the podium after making a statement in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington on Monday. (AP)
