One CNN Poll & Oversampling Does Not a Barack Obama Job Approval Rebound Make

Sorry Politico, but one poll does not an Obama rebound make. Try as you might to artificially report that President Barack Obama’s job approval rating is rebounding, but that is simply not the case. Will you Libs stop at nothing to carry the water for this President even when his base is as upset as ever against The One. I guess the Politico does not want to take at look at this poll, or this one or this one either.  Obama will have to do much more than being forced to sign the Bush era tax extensions to get any real rebound.

The Politico referenced one CNN poll as their source where 48% are in favor of how Obama is handling his job and 48% disapprove.

In a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll released Monday, 48 percent of Americans say they approve of how Obama is handling his job, while 48 percent disapprove.

The disapproval number is the lowest it’s been since May, when it was 46 percent in the same poll. His disapproval rating reached as high as 54 percent in September and clocked in at 50 percent in November.

However, how does Barack Obama’s approval 48% rating rate against past US Presidents? At the end of their second year in office the recent past Presidents job approvals have been as follows. However, the difference between Obama and Reagan is that Dutch made us feel good about our self, never apologized for America, thought the United States was a shining city on a hill and thought that government was the problem, not the solution. Barack Obama, not so much.

1. President George W. Bush had an approval rating of 63% in December of 2002,  - the end of his second year in office.
2. President George H.W. Bush also had a 63% approval rating in 1990.
3. President Bill Clinton, whose party lost control of both houses of Congress in the first midterm election of his presidency, stood at 54% at the end of his second year in office at the end of 1994. 
4. Ronald Reagan, whose party also suffered major losses in his first midterm, had an approval rating of just 41 percent at the end of 1982, two years into his first term. 

 Before the Politico and Dems get too giddy, they might want to as Hot Air states, check the questionable sampling.

The poll itself has some problems, not the least of which is a lack of sample demographics.  CNN has a habit of overpolling Democrats in its polls, although not as bad (usually) as the Washington Post/ABC or the CBS polls do.  The other problem with CNN’s survey is that it surveyed adults, not registered or likely voters.  That is the least reliable sampling method when it comes to predictive modeling — and the poll results to which CNN and Politico refer in this series prior to this were almost certainly from registered or likely voter surveys.

CNN’s poll also differs in direction from two other polls.  One may dismiss Fox News as a biased source, but at least they produced their demographic breakdown when they released the poll showing Obama down to 40/51, a slight drop from the previous 41/50 after the election.  If Fox doesn’t suit one’s taste, then look at Marist, which also found Obama going in the opposite direction, 42/50 — and that had a partisan split in the sample with a D+7.