Barack Obama's approval rating in North Carolina has fallen to 43%, with 53% of voters disapproving of him. That's the lowest PPP has found in monthly polling of the state since the weekend before last year's general election when Democrats were annihilated at the polls.
Obama's got 2 big problems: independents and a loss of support with his party base. Only 31% of independent voters think he's doing a good job to 62% who disapprove. He was at an already bad 38/56 a month ago and things have only gotten worse for him. Obama's other issue is that he's losing support from Democrats. He was at 79/16 and now he's down to 75/20. He also has only a 7% approval with Republicans but that's really par for the course at this point- we're well beyond the point where he can expect to get any support across party lines.
Despite Obama's atrocious approval numbers he remains competitive with Rick Perry and Mitt Romney in the state, at least on the surface. He's tied with Perry at 46% and holds the smallest of advantages over Romney at 45-44. Those numbers aren't as rosy for Obama as they appear to be though. Only 5% of the undecideds in the Perry match up approve of him to 83% who disapprove and on the generic legislative ballot they support Republicans by a 57-21 margin. It's a similar story in the match up with Romney. The undecideds there disapprove of Obama by a 10/81 spread and support a generic Republican 62-14. When those folks come off the fence they're going to be voting GOP which means if the election was today Obama would lose the state.
That said, it would be close. And the reason it would still be close despite Obama's poor numbers is that voters really are not big on the Republican contenders. Rick Perry's favorability spread is the 'best' of the GOP hopefuls but he still has only 34% of voters with a positive opinion of him to 43% with a negative one. The rest all have net favorabilities of -20 or worse: Michele Bachmann's at -23 (29/52), Mitt Romney's at -24 (28/52), Sarah Palin's at -31 (32/63), and Newt Gingrich is at -39 (22/61). That lack of appeal across the board for the Republicans means Obama's still going to have a decent chance at winning this state again so long as he gets his approval back up into the 46-48% range.
One thing that's particularly notable on these North Carolina numbers is Perry basically doing the same as Romney against Obama. The conventional wisdom has been that Romney is the stronger general election candidate but at least in this one swing state that's not the case. Perry's favorability with independent voters is 44/34, while Romney's is 35/50. The lack of an electability gap here could just be a southern thing but it's worth keeping an eye on.
Against the second tier of Republican candidates Obama does better, leading Bachmann 47-45, Gingrich 48-43, and Palin 49-42. Of course the chances of any of those folks being the nominee don't look very good right now.
Obama will still have a good chance at winning North Carolina if he sees a little improvement in his popularity. But his prospects look drearier today than they have at any other point in 2011.
Full results here
You are a disgrace. Poll Ron Paul.
Posted by: Joe | September 09, 2011 at 05:02 PM
Rick Perry's numbers will drop considerably as people find out how far right he is. The guy wants to destroy Social Security. That's just not going to fly.
Posted by: Obama 2012 | September 09, 2011 at 07:36 PM
You gave the results for the generic legislative preference in an earlier post, but didn't include the cross-tabs for legislative preference in this one, just mentioned it in the post. Can you include those as well? (Or make a separate PDF with the full results and cross-tabs of the entire survey, not broken down into sections)
Posted by: realnrh | September 10, 2011 at 03:22 PM
How can you poll Gingrich but not Paul? What a joke.
Posted by: Jesus | September 11, 2011 at 09:14 AM
Who are you "OWNED" by? Must be an affiliate of one of the LAMEstream media. There is someone in the race that actually beats Obama in some polls, but I guess that is not real news because then what, all the corruption might be exposed. Is that what everyone is afraid of?
Guess what, we already know. Stop it now, the country is going to hell and you are assisting in it's demise.
Ron Paul 2012
Posted by: Robin | September 13, 2011 at 05:36 PM
You are too negative about President Obama. Despite 3 years of negative attacks from the news media and the GOP, he is still neck and neck with the Republican candidates.
That is truly remarkable!
Rick Perry's numbers will drop as fast as Mrs. Bachman's after people find out that he wants to destroy Social Security. Every voter knows many people who depend on Social Security and not many of them will actually vote for Perry. He is a flash in the pan.
Posted by: Melvin Williams | September 13, 2011 at 08:42 PM