In a recent NYTimes op-ed, David Brooks argues that people are losing faith in the president:
The result is the Obama slide, the most important feature of the current moment. The number of Americans who trust President Obama to make the right decisions has fallen by roughly 17 percentage points. Obama’s job approval is down to about 50 percent. All presidents fall from their honeymoon highs, but in the history of polling, no newly elected American president has fallen this far this fast.
Anxiety is now pervasive. Trust in government rose when Obama took office. It has fallen back to historic lows. Fifty-nine percent of Americans now think the country is headed in the wrong direction.
This is just why I love Pollster and FiveThirtyEight: you can see how one person’s interpretation of a series of polls fits with the actual trend lines. The upturn in “wrong track” responses is slight compared to the 80-90% of recent history:
Other interesting polling charts: Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight in a recent post uses historical data and hypothetical 2012 polls to argue that crossing the 50% barrier doesn’t doom a president in terms of midterm elections or re-election.
