Americans Rate Obama 7 Points Worse on Spill Than Overall; By party, Democrats' support falls off the most.
Byline: Lymari Morales
Synopsis: More Americans disapprove (46%) than approve (40%) of President Barack Obama's handling of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Obama earns a 47% job approval rating overall in Gallup Daily tracking encompassing the same time period.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- By a six-point margin, more Americans disapprove than approve of President Barack Obama's handling of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The president's 40% approval rating on the oil spill trails his overall job approval rating by seven points.
The findings are from Gallup Daily tracking conducted June 5-6, 2010. Obama's overall job approval rating in the Gallup Daily three-day rolling average ending June 6 was 47%, matching the Gallup Daily weekly aggregate for May 31-June 6. While the 47% weekly average for Obama technically marks the second-lowest average of his administration, it is similar to his weekly ratings since the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig on April 20.
Although Democrats are in both cases the most approving and Republicans the least approving, Democrats' approval on the oil spill falls off the most: 13 percentage points, compared with 8 points among independents. In contrast, Republicans are 4 percentage points more positive about Obama's handling of the oil spill than about his overall job performance -- though both of their ratings are very low.
Two weeks ago, 53% of Americans called Obama's efforts in responding to the spill "very poor" or "poor," while 60% said the same about the federal government more broadly and 73% about BP. As the oil spill has continued, so has the criticism that Obama has not done enough to mitigate the disaster. The White House has been working aggressively to address such criticism, sending Obama to the region several times and attempting to convey command of the situation. However, with oil still spewing from the Deepwater Horizon drilling site, the public has been left watching and waiting for better news for nearly seven weeks. Gallup has not yet asked a second time about Obama's, the federal government's, and BP's handling of the spill, and the current survey marks the first time Gallup has measured "approval" of Obama's handling of it.
In the current survey, Americans in the South and Midwest are less approving of Obama's handling of the spill than are those in the West and East. Those in all regions show slightly less approval of Obama's response to the spill than they do of the overall job...
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