According to this AP Poll, Obama has his highest approval rating since the killing of Osama bin Laden.
Obama's approval rating stands at 57 percent, the highest since May 2011, when U.S. Navy SEALs killed the terror leader, and up 5 percentage points from before the election. And 42 percent say the country is on the right track, up from 35 percent in January 2009.
A few more thoughts after the fleur-de-kos:
His approval isn't as high as it was immediately after the first election:
Obama held much stronger numbers on this measure at the start of his first term, with two-thirds expecting an above-average presidency.
And the country (some people are petitioning to secede!) is still very divided:
Those sharp partisan divides in expectations are represented in the president's approval ratings. About 9 in 10 Democrats say they approve of the way Obama is handling his job, compared with just 2 in 10 Republicans. That gap approaches the 82-point partisan gap in George W. Bush's approval ratings according to Gallup polling in December 2004.
Still, it is an improvement and the more the media reports on this, the higher it will go,
ceteris paribus, and the easier it will be for us to get things done.
Some musing
When I see shifts in approval like this, I frequently ask myself why. It's not always the rational reason of "Obama's doing a better job" but may be reasons such as:
The election being over, people prefer to side with the winner
The election being over, the negative ads are over and that helps Obama
Since the election is over, everyone has been talking about what losers the Republicans are
The election being over, people are finally getting a really good look at the Republicans and seeing how crazy and irresponsible they are
The media has decided that if they want access to the Obama presidency during the next four years they need to play nice - or at least play fair - and that impacts how he is perceived
He's negotiating like a winner with the Republicans, who just seem like whiners
I thought of doing a poll, but I would be much more interested in getting brief essay answers below rather than forcing others into multiple choice responses. Why do you think his approval has gone up?
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Tired of politics? Need to escape? Try my Greek mythology based novels, either the story of Oedipus from the point of view of Jocasta, or a trilogy about Niobe, whose children were murdered by the gods - or were they?