Public Policy Polling

Tough climate for Dems in Arkansas

Arkansas is a very conservative state. That's not exactly breaking news but it's the overwhelming theme when breaking down the results of our latest survey there:

-60% of voters oppose Barack Obama's plans for health care, with just 29% in support. Independents are arrayed against it 73-20. Even among Democrats just 54% say they're for it and among white Democrats it's less than a majority.

-Only 45% of voters in the state say they believe Obama was born in this country, while 31% say they think he was not and 24% are unsure. Arkansas is the first of four states where we've polled the birther issue (Virginia, North Carolina, and Colorado were the others) and found less than half of respondents confident that the President is a natural born citizen. The numbers are particularly dramatic among Republicans with 49% saying Obama was not born here to just 23% who grant that he was.

-55% of Arkansas voters say they prefer Rush Limbaugh's vision for the country to Barack Obama's. That includes 92% of Republicans, 64% of independents, and even 18% of Democrats. This is in spite of the fact that respondents on balance actually dislike Limbaugh, with 44% holding an unfavorable opinion of him to 35% positive.

Overall Obama's approval rating is a negative 40/56 spread, headed in the wrong direction since it was a positive 47/45 back when PPP surveyed the state in March. Obama has the approval of 72% of Democrats, 30% of independents, and 9% of Republicans.

Some folks are surprised that Blanche Lincoln is increasingly being thought of as vulnerable and that Arkansas' three Democratic House members made the NRSC's target list, but when you look at the baseline political conditions in the state you can see why the GOP thinks they might have some opportunities here.

We'll have numbers looking at Lincoln's situation tomorrow.

Full results here

Who do the birthers love?

We decided to break down the birthers by their opinions of Barack Obama and the various leading 2012 contenders. Here's what we found:

-Not surprisingly only 16% of them approve of Obama's job performance while 75% disapprove. I think Mike Littwin might have hit on a pretty good point in the Denver Post today, which is that some of the people who purport to be birthers might not really believe it but that it's shorthand for their general unhappiness with the President.

-The birthers love them some Sarah Palin. She's the most popular politician in the mix with them at 66% favorability. Next is Mike Huckabee at 58%, followed by Newt Gingrich at 46%, and Mitt Romney at 43%.

I mean this with all sincerity- Romney's lack of popularity with the birther wing of the GOP really could scuttle his chances at the nomination in three years.

Looking at the numbers from another angle- 63% of all Americans with a favorable opinion of Sarah Palin are birthers. Same thing with 53% of those who like Gingrich, 50% who view Huckabee positively, and 44% for Romney.

Remember when W. said 'some people call you the elites, I call you my base?' Swap out birthers for elites and you've got the makings of a great Palin speech.

Follow us on Twitter.

GOP candidates with the non-birthers

A commenter on the post about who the birthers like- Sarah Palin- asked for a breakdown on who Republicans who do think Barack Obama was born in the United States like. Great question.

60% of those folks (the reasonable wing of the party?) have a favorable opinion of Mike Huckabee, 58% have one of Sarah Palin, 57% have one of Mitt Romney, and 52% have one of Newt Gingrich.

When it comes to favorability spreads with those voters Huckabee's at +43, Romney's at +40, Gingrich is at +29, and Palin is at +27. That's because Palin's negatives with that group are at 31% while Gingrich is at 22%, and Huckabee and Romney are at just 17%.

So there is a definite divide between what the birther wing of the party and the non-birther wing of the party think about Palin and Romney.

This is no surprise but the ideology breakdown among GOP birthers is 69% conservatives and 30% moderates, while it's 53% moderates and just 46% conservatives among non-birthers.

The fact that none of the GOP candidates exceeds a 60% popularity level with Republican voters who think Obama was born in the United States may speak to the need for 'none of the above' to be the party's nominee in 2012 if they're going to get the moderate votes they need to win the Presidency back. I continue to think the best hope for them to win is to go outside the quartet of early favorites we've been polling on a month to month basis.

Obama’s approval…increases

Topline results are below. Full results, including crosstabs, can be found here.

Q1 Do you approve or disapprove of Barack
Obama’s job performance? If you approve,
press 1. If you disapprove, press 2. If you’re
not sure, press 3.
Approve................. 52%
Disapprove............ 42%
Not Sure................ 6%

Q2 Do you support or oppose President Obama’s
health care plan, or do you not have an
opinion? If you support it, press 1. If you
oppose it, press 2. If you don’t have an opinion,
press 3.
Support ........................................................... 40%
Oppose ........................................................... 47%
No Opinion...................................................... 13%

A deeper look at the birthers

After we conducted polls over the last couple of weeks finding significant numbers of 'birthers' in North Carolina and Virginia, we decided to take the question national but also drum down more specifically on where exactly the people who think Barack Obama wasn't born in the United States do think he's from.

The answer is that 62% of Americans think Obama was born here, while 24% think he was not and 14% are unsure.

10% of the country thinks that he was born in Indonesia, 7% think he was born in Kenya, and 1% think he was born in the Philippines.

That leaves 20%, which includes at least some people who correctly believe that Obama was born in Hawaii, but who don't consider Hawaii to be part of the United States. You read that right- 6% of poll respondents think that Hawaii is not part of the country and 4% are unsure.

It's hard to say what the rest of that 20% thinks. We did ask them if they thought Obama was born in France and while less than half a percent of respondents did, two thirds of that remaining 20% said they 'weren't sure' whether Obama was a Frenchman.

So who are the birthers?

-62% are Republicans, 20% are Democrats, and 18% are independents
-57% are conservatives, 33% are moderates, and 9% are liberals
-56% are men, 44% are women
-86% are white, 7% are Hispanic, 4% are black, and 3% are other races

Fascinating stuff.

Follow us on Twitter

Full results here

Obama steady in Colorado

Barack Obama's approval rating in Colorado was 49% in April and now four months later it's still 49%. 47% of voters disapprove of the job he's doing and 4% aren't sure.

His reviews are highly polarized along partisan lines with 88% of Democrats but only 13% of Republicans saying he's doing a good job. Independents split almost evenly with 48% giving him good marks and 46% disapproving.

Both of our Colorado polls since he took office have found Obama's approval lagging the 54% of the vote he received in the state last year and a Gallup study last week had his popularity there ranking 43rd out of 50 states, behind many places where he did much worse at the ballot box last year.

That begs the question: what's Obama's problem in Colorado?

Comparing our final pre-election poll in the state, which correctly showed him winning with 54% of the vote, to his approval numbers a few things stand out:

-Obama's numbers with Democrats and Republicans now are virtually identical to the share of the vote he got, but he's slipped among independents. He won about 60% of the independent vote but now has just a 48% approval rating with them.

-While Obama is pretty much steady with high approval among Hispanic and black voters, only 44% of whites approve of the job he's doing where 50% of them voted for him.

-His approval rating among young voters (good) and old voters (bad) is similar to what he got in November but he's dropped from winning about 56% of the vote from middle aged voters to a 49% approval rating with them.

One issue that's not helping Obama too much in the state is health care, as 51% of respondents say they're opposed to the President's plans with just 38% in support.

The 'birther' movement is relatively strong in Colorado. Just 58% of voters in the state will say for sure that they think Obama was born in the United States while 24% believe that he was not and 18% are unsure. This line of thinking is particularly prevalent among Republicans, 43% of whom think the President was not born in the country compared to just 33% who think he was.

One thing Colorado voters can be proud of though is their awareness that Hawaii is part of the United States. A PPP national poll released earlier today found that only 90% of Americans overall think that it is, but 97% of folks in Colorado do.

Full results here

Colorado Preview

When we polled Colorado in April and found both Michael Bennet and Bill Ritter with pretty iffy numbers that was the first time I started thinking Democrats might be in a little bit of trouble. The next week we polled Illinois and found Alexi Giannoulias and Mark Kirk tied- that furthered my sense things were shifting, and pretty much every poll we've conducted since then has fit that pattern.

So this week we're back to Colorado and there's good news for Democrats: things aren't really any worse than they were in April in the state. And there's good news for Republicans too: they had to like where they stood when we conducted that poll.

Tomorrow we're going to have Senate numbers, Wednesday we'll have Barack Obama's approval and related questions, Thursday we'll have Governor numbers, and Friday we'll look at the Republican primaries for Governor and Senate.

One big observation from the numbers we'll be releasing tomorrow: all four major Senate candidates have negative approval/favorability numbers. The field certainly is devoid of heavyweights for a race without an elected incumbent, and voters in the state aren't that enthralled with their choices at this point.

And lest you think all the birthers are in the south, 43% of Colorado Republicans think Barack Obama was not born in the United States, 33% think he was, and 24% are unsure. Colorado is more down with the whole 'Hawaii is part of the US' thing than North Carolina voters were though. That stuff will be part of the Obama approval release on Wednesday.

Sunday Odds and Ends

-Former Lieutenant Governor Dennis Wicker is the latest to join the possible Democratic candidates for Senate parade. Wicker has one very big positive: he's raised far more money than any of the other candidates publicly eying the race. On the negative side he lost the primary he raised all that money for by a wide margin and hasn't been in the public eye for almost a decade. Overall, given that this race is probably going to determined #1) by Barack Obama's popularity and #2) by the extent to which Richard Burr can be painted as ineffective and excessively partisan, Wicker would be a perfectly competent nominee. I feel the same way about the other Dems looking at the race too.

-We're scheduled to poll New Jersey next weekend but we're going to do Arkansas instead. NJ is getting polled plenty and there's a lot of curiosity about the impact everything going on right now is having on Blanche Lincoln's situation.

-Here's a key number from the Charlotte poll we're releasing tomorrow: Anthony Foxx leads John Lassiter 59-30 with Democrats who approve of Pat McCrory's job performance. Those folks made McCrory's long tenure as the Republican mayor of a Democratic city possible, and could be the swing voters who determine the winner this fall.

-Here are some initial observations from our weekend polling:

*The Mountain West has birthers too: among our first 182 Colorado respondents 94 said they thought Barack Obama was born in the United States, 44 said they thought he wasn't, and 44 said they weren't sure.

*Is there a divide in the birther ranks? Our national poll so far finds them nearly evenly split on whether think Obama was born in Indonesia or Kenya.

You would have seen this all already if you were following us on Twitter.

Birthers strong in NC too

Only 54% of North Carolina voters say with certainty that they believe Barack Obama was born in the United States, with 26% saying they think he was not, and 20% unsure.

The 'birther' phenomenon has gotten a lot of attention nationally in recent weeks and the North Carolina numbers come out pretty similar to a Virginia poll we did last week that found only 53% of people there believed Obama was born in the country. National polling by Research 2000 for Daily Kos has found that this movement is particularly strong in the south.

47% of Republicans in the state think Obama was not born in the US, with 29% unsure, and just 24% stating that they think he was. The concern related to Obama's origin is less pronounced among Democrats and independents, 75% and 63% respectively of whom say that Obama was born here.

We also threw in a question about whether people considered Hawaii to be part of the United States, and 8% of respondents either said they did not or that they were unsure. 68% of those voters expressed disapproval of Obama's job performance, an indication that their refusal to acknowledge Hawaii as part of the country may be a response to dislike of the President the state produced.

This may be a fringe movement, but at least in the south it's a pretty large fringe.

Full results here

Birthers very much a rural phenomenon

Beyond party the greatest indicator we're finding demographically for people being 'birthers' is what type of community they live in- it's very much a rural phenomenon.

In North Carolina 29% of the overall population describes where they live as rural, but 43% of the birthers do. In Virginia 24% of the overall population describes where they live as rural, while 33% of the birthers fall into that category.

It's not just that rural voters are more likely to be Republicans. For instance in North Carolina 64% of rural Republicans think he was not born in the US, compared to 47% of Republicans overall. 20% of rural Democrats think he wasn't born in the US, compared to 12% of all Democrats.

That same trend holds in Virginia where 53% of rural Republicans think Obama was not born in the US, compared to 41% of all Republicans.

When we do this poll in Colorado (assuming it holds its lead) we'll also break it down by income and education level to see how strong the trends are on those fronts.