The President's Approval Ratings Numbers

With the president set to give the State of the Union speech tonight, I thought it would be a good time to look at the president's approval ratings. The current meme being circulated is that his ratings are in the toilet, and that he is in trouble because of that. At least, that's what the right-wing would like for Americans to believe.

But that's not quite the correct picture. The top chart shows the average approval rating for the year of 2013 (45.8%), and it's in the neighborhood of the ratings for the three previous years. The presidents number did fall a bit at the end of 2013, hurt primarily by the poor roll-out of the Obamacare program. But those glitches have been fixed and millions of Americans are buying insurance through the program -- and the polls show that the end of the year slide has been halted and his approval numbers are again climbing (with the RealClearPolitics average of all current polls showing his approval rating at 43.7%). I expect, as usual, his numbers will rise again after the State of the Union speech.

When these approval rating polls come out, they can give the impression that his approval is dropping across the country. That is simply not true. The lowest numbers are in the reddest states, and they drag the poll average down. There are many states where the president's numbers remain high (and many of these are the most populous states in the country). The chart below shows the states where the average approval rating for the president in 2013 did NOT show more disapproval than approval. In these states the approval rating was higher than the disapproval rating (except for Texas, where the two figure were the same).

My point is that the president is not doing nearly as poorly as the right-wing pundits want you to believe. And compared to the numbers of congressional Republicans, the president's numbers are astronomical.