President Obama at One Year: Lower Ratings, Higher Doubts
Bruised if unbroken, President Barack Obama faces shrinking public confidence, increasingly negative views of the country's direction and far lower ratings than those he carried triumphantly into the White House a year ago this week.
But it could be worse.
Despite their disappointments, 53 percent of Americans in this ABC News/Washington Post poll approve of Obama's job performance overall -- 15 points lower than his opening grade, but still just over half at the one-year mark. He remains personally popular, if far less so. And confidence in his leadership, as weakened as it is, greatly exceeds that in the Republicans in Congress, or, for that matter, in his own party.
The comedown nonetheless is dramatic, partly given the high expectations when Obama took office. Sixty-two percent of Americans now say the country's off on the wrong track, the most in 11 months. For the first time more than half, 53 percent, aren't confident in Obama to make the right decisions for the country's future. Just 41 percent say he's keeping his major campaign promises. And while a year ago 76 percent thought he'd bring "needed change" to Washington -- his campaign mantra -- far fewer, 50 percent, today say he's actually done so.
Indeed more than half, 52 percent, now say Obama hasn't accomplished much overall -- up sharply from 36 percent at the three-month mark, the height of his economic recovery efforts. With the economy still rated as the country's most pressing problem, Obama's approval for handling it has fallen from 60 percent a month after he took office to 47 percent today. And a new low, barely over a third, says his policies are making the economy better.
The economy's not the only challenge. While Obama has focused attention on health care -- its rating as the country's most pressing problem is sharply up -- his prescription lacks broad support; 52 percent disapprove of the way he's handling the issue, more than half for the second month and up from 29 percent last spring. And he continues to take it on the chin for the deficit; 56 percent disapprove, more than half steadily since summer.
GRACE: There are some grace notes. Fifty-five percent approve of Obama's handling of the threat of terrorism; more, a notable 62 percent, approve of the way he's handled the government's response to the attempted Christmas Day bombing of a Northwest Airlines jet.
Obama's buoyed, as well, by the fact that 58 percent of Americans continue to express a favorable opinion of him personally, the most basic measure of a public figure's popularity. (George W. Bush, for comparison, left office with 37 percent favorability.) Obama's down a steep 21 points on this score, but it does remain positive for him.
Moreover, 63 percent see Obama as a strong leader, 57 percent say he understands the problems of people like them and 55 percent think he shares their values. These are down, respectively, by 9, 15 and 12 points from their levels when he took office. But personal favorability and empathy serve as a politician's cartilage when the road gets rough, and Obama's aided by the fact that his remain positive overall.
Also, more than half of Americans, 54 percent, see Obama as "about right" ideologically, rather than too liberal, 37 percent (its peak was 40 percent in November) or too conservative. But this too, is down, from an usually high 65 percent "about right" when he took office.
CONFIDENCE and IRE: As noted, confidence in Obama's decision-making has deteriorated markedly. Forty-seven percent trust him to make the right decisions for the country's future, down from 61 percent when he took office. Fifty-three percent don't, up from 37 percent.
But that's better than the other chief players in Washington politics. Far more Americans, 75 percent, don't trust the Republicans in Congress to make the right decisions for the country's future; just 24 percent do -- up 5 points from its nadir in October, but still only half Obama's level of trust. Sixty-eight percent don't trust decision-making by the Democrats in Congress, up 12 points since January. Thirty-two percent do.
Some ire is also deflected by the fact that far more Americans blame the country's economic straits on the Bush administration, for inadequate regulation of the financial industry -- 67 percent -- than separately blame Obama, for not doing enough to turn things around, 36 percent. It's true, too, that today's 62 percent "wrong track" figure, while 14 points worse than its recent best last spring, is still better than its record 90 percent in October 2008.
Also, while 42 percent call the economy the single biggest problem for the president and the Congress to address, still far and away the top item, it's down from 66 percent a year ago. That reflects a large rise in the number who cite health care as the top problem, now 24 percent.
PRECEDENTS: To a large extent Obama's treading the predicted path for a president presiding over 10 percent unemployment. His course in approval almost precisely matches that of the last president to take office in the tempest of a recession, Ronald Reagan, who went from 68 percent job approval shortly after he took office to 52 percent at the one-year mark. Obama's gone from 68 percent to 53 percent in the comparable period. Their first-year ratings correlate at .88, with 1 representing a perfect match.
The worrying news for Obama is that Reagan went on to slip below 50 percent and pretty much stayed there throughout his second year, bottoming out at 42 percent at the two-year mark (and losing 26 House seats en route). He recovered only when the economy did.
Better for Obama is the long-term precedent; Reagan did recover, and completed his two-term presidency with an average 56 percent approval, solidly in the midrange for a postwar president.
Some of Obama's ratings also call to mind another previous president. In January 1994, with the public mood fouled by a recession hangover, just 37 percent of Americans said Bill Clinton was keeping most of his major campaign promises, and 53 percent said he hadn't accomplished much so far -- both similar to Obama's ratings now. Clinton, however, went on to end his two terms with an average 57 percent approval, almost identical to Reagan's.
The net change for Obama in his first year, down 15 points, is about the same as it was for Jimmy Carter as well as Reagan, and was worse for two presidents (both unelected) -- Harry Truman, down 36 points in his first year, and Gerald Ford, down 26 points.
On an individual level, marks at one year in office don't always predict full-term success. George W. Bush soared at one year after 9/11, but had a disastrous second term; Richard Nixon had 63 percent approval after one year but ended with a career average of just 49 percent. Nonetheless, there is a relationship overall; for presidents since Truman, approval at one year correlates with full-career approval at .63. Exclude Bush and it's .82.
PARTISANSHIP: Partisanship and ideology are the two most powerful features of Obama's ratings -- as is customary, and increasingly so in the past generation. Eighty-seven percent of Democrats approve of his performance in office, virtually unchanged from the first ABC/Post reading a month after he took office. That plummets to 20 percent approval among Republicans, down 17 points as the president's first year has unfolded.
More troubling for the administration is the shift among independents, the centerweight of national politics. Obama's approval rating in this group is down from 67 percent a year ago February to 49 percent now, an 18-point fall.
The trend is all the more important because independents, 38 percent of the public, outnumber Democrats and Republicans in this poll, as they did across 2009 for the first time since 1995. One key reason is continued defections from the Republican Party; 23 percent in this survey identify themselves as Republicans, matching the 2009 average and down steadily from its peak, 31 percent, on average in 2003. But Democrats have slipped too, to 32 percent now, compared with an average 36 percent in 2008, their best year since 1992.
The partisan divisions are different for Obama than they were for Reagan, who took office in a somewhat less partisan age. Reagan maintained 57 percent approval from independents after his first year, 8 points better than Obama, and also did better among Democrats than Obama among Republicans. But Reagan -- perhaps surprisingly given his iconic status in the GOP -- was a bit weaker in his own party at one year than Obama is today.
All this has implications for the midterm elections, but there's also time for it to change. An ABC News analysis, reported in more detail last month, finds a substantial correlation since 1946, .51, between a president's approval rating a year before his first midterm election and his party's losses in that election. But the correlation is much higher, .8, using approval immediately before the midterm election. What matters more is not Obama's approval now, but where it is in 10 months.
GROUPS – Obama remains most popular among young adults, ages 18 to 29, whose record level of support was crucial in the 2008 election. Nonetheless his approval rating is down 22 points in this group, from 84 percent last February to 62 percent now -- a big drop in a core group. His approval from seniors, meanwhile, is down 17 points, to 42 percent, his weakest age group.
Obama's lost 11 points in approval among liberals and moderates the past year, but twice that, a 20-point drop, in approval among conservatives, from 49 percent last February to 29 percent now. It hurts him especially since the ranks of self-identified conservatives have grown, to 38 percent in this poll (about half again as many liberals) and 37 percent on average last year, the most in ABC/Post annual averages since 1988. (The 1988-2008 average was 32 percent.)
Obama has held tough among people who say they voted for him; 89 percent approve of his work. His rating falls to 11 percent among supporters of John McCain, and it's 53 percent among those who say they didn't vote. Indeed in some ways we're back to Nov. 4, 2008: Obama was elected that day with 53 percent of the vote – precisely his approval rating now.
METHODOLOGY: This ABC News/Washington Post poll was conducted by telephone Jan. 12-15, 2010, among a random national sample of 1,083 adults, including landline and cell-phone-only respondents, with an oversample of African Americans (weighted to their correct share of the population) for a total of 153 black respondents. Results for the full sample have a 3.5-point error margin. Below description of sampling error. Sampling, data collection and tabulation by TNS of Horsham, Pa.
Sampling Error: What it Means
Surveys based on a random sample of respondents are subject to sampling error – a calculation of how closely the results reflect the attitudes or characteristics of the full population that's been sampled. Since sampling error can be quantified, it's frequently reported along with survey results to underscore that those results are an estimate only.
Sampling error, however, is oversimplified when presented as a single number in reports that may include subgroups, poll-to-poll changes, lopsided margins and results measured on the difference. Sampling error in such cases cannot be described accurately in a brief television or radio story or on-screen graphic.
Sampling error assumes a probability sample – a random, representative sample of a full population in which all respondents have a known (and not zero) probability of selection. Given that prerequisite, sampling error is based largely on sample size, but also on the division of opinions or characteristics measured and on the level of confidence the surveyor seeks. A larger sample has a lower error margin. A result of 90-10 percent has a smaller error margin than a 50-50 result; when more people agree, there's less chance of error in the estimate. And a result computed at the 90 percent confidence level has a smaller error margin than a result computed at 95 percent confidence.
Assuming a 50-50 division in opinion calculated at a 95 percent confidence level, a sample of 1,000 adults – common in ABC News polls – has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. The error margin is higher for subgroups, since their sample size is smaller. Given customary subgroup sizes, for 800 whites the error margin would be plus or minus 3.5 points; for 560 women, +/- 4 points; for 280 Republicans, +/- 6 points. Click here for a list of examples using averages from recent ABC News polls.
At a 90-10 division of opinion, rather than 50-50, still at 95 percent confidence, sampling error for 1,000 interviews is +/- 2 points, not 3. For a sample of 100 cases – roughly the minimum sample size ABC News will report – the error margin is +/- 10 points at a 50-50 percent division, +/- 8.5 points at 75-25 percent and +/- 6 points at 90-10 percent. (ABC News polls at times will oversample small populations to increase their sample size to a level we consider reliably reportable.)
As noted, the confidence level is the third chief variable in sampling error. (There are other factors in some surveys, such as design effects – see the addition to the end of this piece - and finite-population adjustments, which we'll leave aside here.) The 3-point error margin at 95 percent confidence for a sample of 1,000 declines to a +/- 2.5 points at 90 percent confidence and +/- 2 points at 80 percent confidence.
(Some organizations round sampling error to whole numbers; others report them to the decimal. ABC's practice is to round them to the half. That acknowledges the differences caused by sample size – 800 and 1,500 both round to +/-3; better to show the former as 3.5 and the latter as 2.5 – without suggesting the level of precision in the data implied by entirely unrounded decimals, e.g. +/-3.3.)
The calculations above are based on a single sample, using a standard formula – multiply the division in opinion (e.g., .50 times .50 for a 50/50 split), divide the result by the sample size, take the square root and multiply by the so-called "critical value"– for 95 percent confidence, 1.96.
Note that the division is premised on simple dichotomous responses (support/oppose, yes/no, Candidate A/Candidate B). The formula is different for measures that have three or more response choices – relevant, for instance, in calculating the margin of error for candidate support in a multi-candidate election. While the differences usually are minor for responses in the 30 percent to 70 percent range, for precision in such cases we use a formula reported by Prof. Charles Franklin of the University of Wisconsin in his 2007 paper, "The Margin of Error for Differences in Polls."
The calculation of differences between two independent samples – such as change from one poll to the next – also is computed differently. For example, it takes a change of 4.5 points from one poll of 1,000 to another the same size to be statistically significant, assuming 50/50 divisions in both samples and a 95 percent confidence level. (Again that is lower at different divisions in opinion and/or lower confidence levels; and higher for smaller sample sizes, e.g. subgroups.)
Other comparisons require other calculations. To compare results measured on the difference from one poll to another – e.g., from a 14-point lead for Candidate A in one survey to a 4-point lead for Candidate B in the next – our approach is to calculate the error margin for change in Candidate A's support from one poll to the next, then the error margin for change in Candidate B's support, and ensure that the change is significant.
Calculating the significance of poll-to-poll change in an index, such as the ongoing ABC News Consumer Comfort Index, also requires more complicated calculations, for which ABC relies on consultations with sampling statisticians.
In all cases, the ABC News Polling Unit describes differences or changes in polling data as statistically significant only on the basis of calculations that this is the case. Results that are significant at a high level of confidence, but below 95 percent, may be characterized with modifying language, such as a "slight" change. And in some cases we'll report the confidence level at which a result is statistically significant.
It should be noted that results are not equally likely to fall anywhere within a margin of sampling error, but instead are least likely to extend to its extremes. For example, if candidate support is 51-45 percent in a 772-voter sample with a 3.5-point error margin, that's "within sampling error;" it could be a 46.5-49.5 percent race at the extremes. However, the probability that the result in fact constitutes a lead for the 50-percent candidate can be calculated; in this example it's 91 percent.
That or any confidence level indicates the number of times a theoretical infinite number of samples, of a given size and a given result, would come within sampling error of the actual population value – 9 times out of 10 at 90 percent confidence, 19 out of 20 at 95 percent confidence, 99 out of 100 at 99 percent confidence.
All these calculations account only for sampling error, the only kind of imprecision that's readily quantifiable in probability-based samples. Survey research also is subject to non-quantifiable non-sampling error, including factors such as methodological rigor; non-random non-coverage of elements of the population under study; non-random non-response influencing who participates; the wording, order and response categories in questions; and the professionalism of interviewers and data producers. Of note, no margin of sampling error is calculable in non-random, non-probability samples, such as opt-in internet panels.
A further complication in sampling error, alluded to above, stems from a survey's design effect, a calculation that adjusts for effects such as clustering in area probability samples (exit polls, for example, or our face-to-face surveys in Iraq and Afghanistan); and weighting, relevant to random-digit-dialed (RDD) telephone surveys as well as to other forms of probability sampling.
In exit polls conducted for the National Election Pool, a media consortium including ABC News, the design effect of clustering and weighting alike is given as 2.25. As a result, a sample of 1,000 people in one of these exit polls has an error margin of +/-4.5 points (with a 50/50 split at the 95 percent confidence level), rather than the 3 points that would have been calculated without taking the design effect into account. (This is figured by multiplying the error margin based on sample size alone, in this case 3 points, by the square root of the design effect, in this case 1.5.
In RDD telephone samples, the design effect due to weighting in the past generally has been so slight as to be ignorable. That's changed recently as telephone sampling procedures have been altered to include cell-phone respondents; these procedures increase the theoretical margin of sampling error because additional weighting is needed to incorporate the cell and landline samples. (The situation also occurs when oversamples are used to increase the reliability of the estimate of a particular group. Again, while oversampling is done to improve estimates, the weighting required to adjust the sample back to true population norms increases the design effect in the full sample.)
At ABC we've tracked the design effect of each poll we've conducted since we started adding cell-only interviews in fall 2008; in the last six (with consistent cell-only sample sizes) it's averaged 1.42. Inclusion of this design effect is why we now report most ABC/Post polls of about 1,000 people as having a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.5 points, rather than the customary 3 points.
It's ironic that taking steps to improve the accuracy of a survey by enhancing coverage of its target population has the perverse effect of increasing its theoretical margin of sampling error; this is a reason that sampling error in and of itself is not a full measure of a survey's accuracy. It's also a reason to be cautious making comparisons across surveys. Some, less accurately, report a lower margin of sampling error because they don't take design effects into account. Others may have a lower theoretical error margin, but significant noncoverage -- an example of the nonsampling error described above.
In some ways this situation is similar to that involving response rates, which can be improved in ways that degrade sample coverage. (See details here.) Better response rates, for that reason, in and of themselves are not necessarily indicators of better data. Likewise, a lower theoretical sampling error does not necessarily indicate a better estimate, if for example it were obtained via a sample that failed to optimize coverage of the population under study.
