Commentarama Poll Analyzed

As you may recall, we recently ran our second quarterly Commentarama Poll to grade Obama and the Republicans. . . which sounds like a bad fairy tale, or a fifties rock band. Seventy-eight of you answered, and the results are interesting. Let’s discuss.

If I could use only one word to sum up the changes in the recent poll from the first quarterly Commentarama Poll (here and here), I would say “pessimism.” As a group, you seem even less enamored of Obama, and you think he is less likely to achieve his goals. You are more positive on the Republicans than you were, but you clearly aren’t anywhere near sold yet.

Grading Obama

We began by asking you to grade Obama on the typical A-F scale. Fifty-eight percent of you gave him an F, which is slightly more than the 55% who did last time. Those extra three percent came from the group that gave him a D last time. Combined 83% of you gave him a D or an F in both polls.

What was more interesting was the drop in support among the 15% of you who approve of Obama (15%. . . see, I told you not everyone who reads Commentarama is a conservative). In our first poll, 1% gave him an A, 7% gave him a B and 7% gave him a C. But 4% of you have now dropped you grade from B to C, with 11% giving him a C and only 3% now giving him a B. If we assume that you are representative of liberals at large -- and, yes, I do recognize that you aren’t for many reasons, e.g. you read this site and our poll isn’t statistically significant -- but if we assume that you are, then your downgrading him represents a drop in support among his supporters of 27%. If that translates into lost intensity, then the Democrats are in serious trouble.

By the way, if you gave Obama an A, I would sincerely like to hear your reasoning, as I would have assumed that you would be upset that he hasn’t managed to achieve his goals?

Understanding Obama

Along with Obama’s fall in popularity, Commentarama readers now report being even less sure of what exactly Obama wants to achieve. We asked you to tell us in which areas you thought you understood what Obama’s policy goals are. Many of you noticed that we did not include a “none of the above” option. We did that because it would have been too easy for people to just check that box. Soooooo, like you did with the first poll, you made your own "none of the above" option by not voting. Indeed, 32 of you chose not to answer.

If we leave you out for the moment, then Obama’s best result came in health care where 80% of you claimed to understand his goals, though this is down from 92% in our prior poll. Of the seven goals we listed, this was the only one to exceed 50%. His next two best understood goals were environmental policy, down from 56% to 45%, and foreign policy, which was the only goal to go up -- from 39% to 47%. None of that speaks well for Obama's ability to communicate his goals.

But it gets worse. If we factor in the non-voters as a “none of the above” vote, the number of people claiming to understand Obama’s policies gets downright horrible:

48% Health Care Reform
28% Foreign Policy
27% Environmental Protection
20% Fixing the Economy/Job Creation
18% Deficit Reduction
16% Education

What we have here is a failure to communicate! Actually, I don’t think so. I’ve outlined several of these areas now in the Obama Agenda posts, not to mention in our regular articles. Thus, if it was just a simple matter of understanding his agenda, these numbers should be a lot higher. But they aren’t. Plus, take a look at these changes from last time:

+8% Foreign Policy
-11% Environmental Protection
-11% Fixing the Economy/Job Creation
-12% Health Care Reform
-12% Education

Why would your knowledge of his agenda fall over time if this was just a failure of communication? It shouldn’t. I suspect the problem is more likely that Obama’s actions have not been consistent with his words and this is leaving people confused about what he wants to achieve. I further suspect that his constant retreats aren’t helping.

Obama’s Chance of Success

You are also significantly less positive about Obama’s ability to achieve his goals. In October, only 18% of you felt that Obama wouldn’t achieve any of the goals we identified by 2012. That number has now risen to 44%!!!

According to Commentarama readers, the goal he is most likely to obtain is financial regulation, with 38% of you saying he will get that. The second most achievable goal is some face saving version of ObamaCare at 30%. But this is down from 66% last time! Indeed, in each area, you are now much more pessimistic about his chances. Take a look at the percentage point drop for each:

-36% A face saving version of ObamaCare (66% to 30%)
-18% Cap and Trade (22% to 4%)
-9% An immigration amnesty (26% to 17%)
-7% An assault weapon’s ban (18% to 11%)
-6% Card check for the unions (18% to 12%
-3% ObamaCare (5% to 2%)

And only 7% of you thought he could achieve any sort of debt reduction (which wasn’t on the original poll).

All of this translates into a dramatic drop in how you grade his ability to achieve his goals. None of you gave him an A in that regard, only 2 percent gave a B, and only 9% gave him a C. The other 89% gave him a D or an F. If we compare this to how you rated his efforts in October assuming you were one of his supporters, this again represents a significant drop both among supporters and non-supporters. At that point, 28% gave him an A, B or C, with 6% actually giving him an A.

Thus, not only do you not understand what he wants to achieve, but you are increasingly likely to think he can’t get what he wants. If I were Obama, I would repackage my agenda to something smaller, easier to grasp, and easier to obtain. Success breeds success, failure breeds failure.

Obama’s Blunders

We also asked you to rate what you though was Obama’s most embarrassing failure to date. The winner, at 34%, was his missteps with his appointments. But economic matters actually came in a little higher when they were combined: combining the 22% who chose the deficit and the 17% who said jobs, economic concerns came in at 39%.

Interestingly, the other issues didn’t resonate nearly as much. Only 10% of you named Copenhagen, showing that you don’t see his environmental failure as that embarrassing. Another 10% of you mentioned his retreats on ObamaCare. And only 5% named China (none said Honduras), leading me to conclude that foreign policy remains the red-headed step child unless a war goes wrong.

Thus, if I were a Republican looking to heat up the base, I would certainly not forget to mention his appointments along with his economic problems, but I would probably skip the foreign policy stuff, the environmental stuff, and I would attack ObamaCare as a tax increase rather than pointing out his inability to stand by any part of it.

The Republicans

The Republican leadership improved dramatically in your eyes since October, though they still have a long way to go. When we asked you to grade them, only 5% of you gave them passing marks and another 66% felt they were starting to get it. Twenty-eight percent of you felt they were hopeless. That number has now dropped to 20% and the number of A’s has increased to 18%. Within the “starting to get it” category, we added an intermediate level -- “almost there.” Twenty-one percent of you chose that. This means that 39% of you now say that they are there or almost there, with another 39% of you saying they’re getting there. Those aren’t great numbers yet, but they are marked improvement.

You are also more positive that the Republicans will retake some parts of the government in November. Indeed, when we asked in October, 27% of you thought the Republicans wouldn’t get either the House or the Senate. This number has now fallen to 14%. Combining the other numbers, 44% of you think the Republicans will take the Senate and 76% think the Republicans will retake the House. A full 36% of you believe the Republicans will get both the House and Senate.

What this tells me is that the Republicans still need to close the deal. I would recommend something that allows them to break from the past, like a short simple ten point platform that defines who they want to be. . . and I would make it very attractive to the Tea Party people.