Wednesday 18 May 2011

O-mentum?




This graph tracks the President's approval rating over the past 6 months. Whenever the black is over the red line, that means more people approve than disapprove of Barack's job performance.

That first little peak in January shows the nation clearly rallying behind him as consoler in chief after the Gabrielle Giffords shooting. The most recent spike began just after the death of Osama Bin Laden.

In both cases, I find it interesting that the President's displayed great sensitiviy and excellence at a key aspect of his job more or less exactly corresponding with the Republicans putting on a freak show of unseriousness. In January, Sarah Palin responded to the Giffords shooting as if she herself were the real victom, and of course Donald Trump walked right into Obama's carefully laid trap just in time for him to spring it on him at the White House Correspondence Dinner mere days before the death of Bin Laden.

Will this improvement in the polls last? I'm going to go out on a limb and make a prediction that it will - that at least the black line will stay over the red for the next couple of months.

It's probably foolish for me to actually put that in writing, though. After all, as the great Yogi Berra used to say, "It's tough to make predictions. Especially about the future."

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

no graph. Nooooooooo!

Obama London said...

Sorry for the snafu - I've reuploaded the pic.

Also, you can play around with the approval ratings polls to make your own charts here if you like: http://polltracker.talkingpointsmemo.com/contests/us-approval-obama