AP-GfK Poll: A grouchy public sticking with Obama...thanks Liz Sidoti

[Jennicut]

By LIZ SIDOTI
The Associated Press
Wednesday, November 11, 2009; 8:49 AM

"The public grew slightly more dispirited on a range of matters over the past month, including war and the economy, continuing the slippage that has occurred since Obama took office, the latest Associated Press-GfK poll shows.

This comes at a time when he is trying to revive the struggling economy, considering sending more troops to the 8-year-old Afghanistan war, muscling a health care reform overhaul through Congress and hoping to push through other ambitious measures like legislation focused on climate change."http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/11/AR2009111103763.html

Of course, it says his approval rating is 54%, unchanged from October.

Best thing I saw was the disapproval of sending more troops to Afghanistan.

"Compared with October, 45 percent of people now disapprove of Obama's handling of Iraq, up from 37 percent; while 48 percent now disapprove of his handling of Afghanistan, up from 41 percent. A majority of Americans oppose both wars. And more than half - 54 percent - now oppose sending more troops to Afghanistan, an increase from 50 percent last month." I think with the public on your side, you can make the argument that the Rethugs and the generals want us to keep going down the wrong path.

[bluestateguy]

1. Message: We still like you, but our patience is not unlimited

nt

[uponit7771]

8. Yeap

[Clio the Leo]

2. Yesterday Politco's headline on the matter read....

"Approval slipping..." (which lead you to believe it was about the President's approval rating when it was really about the direction the country was going.) They have now changed the headline for the SAME story to read "country mixed on Afghan support..."

they think they're cute lol

[ChairmanAgnostic]

3. ignore politico

don't go there. Don't give them the hits.

[Cha]

4. "Handling of IRaq"? WTF is

wrong with that?

[impik]

5. She's a serious bitch

http://mediamattersaction.org/blog/

AP's Sidoti spins latest Obama poll numbers really, really hard
November 11, 2009 8:49 am ET by Eric Boehlert

More problems with the dismal AP report on the latest Obama polling numbers. CF already highlighted the article's bizarre and condescending use of the phrase "novice commander in chief" to describe the president. But the piece is also riddle with other problems.

Question: How many paragraphs does it take the AP's Liz Sidoti to report what Obama's latest job approval rating actually is?

Answer: Nine paragraphs.

That's sort of all you need to know about Sidoti's report, which paints an almost comically bleak picture of the political landscape that Obama now faces. (It's like Jimmy Carter-meets-Herbert Hoover.) Why is the nine-paragraph delay telling? Because if Obama's poll numbers had actually gone done, than that information would have been included very high in the AP dispatch; likely in the second or third paragraph.

But because Obama's (healthy) poll approval rating remained unchanged Sidoti needed nine paragraphs to properly spin the polling data before conceding that, oh yeah, Obama still enjoys a robust job approval rating of 54 percent. (i.e. It's a job approval rating that his direct predecessor likely did not enjoy for his entire second term.)

Meanwhile, this AP passage seems monumentally misguided :

Now, Obama's approval rating stands at 54 percent, roughly the same as in October but very different from what it was in January just before he took office, 74 percent.

Honestly, was there a political reporter in America who thought that Obama's sky-high job approval rating back in January was real? Didn't everyone pretty much concede that that rating was artificially high and reflected the country's exuberance with electing a new president? (It was like when president Bush's approval ratings soared into the high 80's immediately following 9/11.) So if that Inauguration Day number for Obama wasn't real, why would reporters like Sidoti now point to it as a benchmark for how far Obama has supposedly fallen?

I'm curious, did Sidoti ever write about Bush's approval rating when it hit bottom in the low 30's by contrasting that with his post-9/11 numbers? I certainly doubt it, because everyone knew those 2001 numbers were artificially high. But today you see reporters like Sidoti who all the time point to Obama's Inauguration Day numbers and pretend it's newsworthy that his approval rating isn't what it was in January.

Bottom line: For decades inside the Beltway press corps, the operating rule for assessing monthly approval ratings for the president was simple: Did the numbers go up or down from the previous month? And if they moved significantly than that might be considered news. But under Obama, that approach has been ditched in favor of Sidoti's AP style which is, have Obama's approval ratings gone down from eight months ago?

Like we said, Sidoti spins these numbers really, really hard.

[Kdillard]

6. Thanks. The spinning in this article was horrendous. It makes me question

The validity of the poll.

[Bitwit1234]

7. Grouchy...I didn't know that the Tea Baggers

were sticking with Obama I thought they were against him.HMMMMM learn something new every day.

[FrenchieCat]

9. The media have been trying to undermind this President since he came into office.....

the honeymoon was over on November 4th, 2008.

They know it and we know it....the the public at large still doesn't,
although it appears that some are getting the clues.

This is what this President has to put up with,
nowithstanding all of the various feet kept up his ass.

I salute him, cause he fucking deserves it.

[jaysunb]

10. Amen !

:thumbsup: