Two-thirds of Americans Give President Obama Negative Marks on Economy

As unemployment continues to hover around the 10% mark nationally, Americans are beginning to lose a little of the optimism that they had a few months ago on where their financial conditions will be going in the next few months. This is something the White House is paying attention to as evidenced by the recent announcement that they will be holding a job summit next month to discuss how to find work for these millions of people who are unemployed. But is this going to be enough as President Obama’s job approval on the economy continues to move in a downward direction?

Just one-third of Americans (34%) rate the overall job President Obama is doing on the economy positively while two-thirds (66%) give it negative ratings. This is down from October when two in five U.S. adults (40%) gave the president’s performance on the economy positive marks and 60% rated it negatively. Also, when it comes to having confidence in the White House and the Administration to produce policies to help fix the economic crisis, 44% of Americans are confident and 56% are not confident. This is unchanged from last month.

These are some of the results of The Harris Poll ^® of 2,303 adults surveyed online between November 2 and 11, 2009 by Harris Interactive ^®.

Economic Expectations

Thinking about their household’s financial situation, less and one in five U.S. adults (18%) say they think it will be better in the next six months while one-third (35%) believe it will be worse and 47% say it will remain the same. In October, one-quarter (23%) believed their household’s financial situation would be better in six months, 45% said it would remain the same and three in ten (31%) thought it would get worse. The number of Americans who say things are going to be worse is the highest it has been since March of this year, sowing that the economic optimism of the summer may be dwindling.

Job Market

The job market has been a lagging economic indicator and talk of a jobless recovery is persistent. Less than one in ten Americans (8%) rate the current job market in their region of the country as good while 18% say it is neither good nor bad. Three-quarters (73%) however, rate the job market in their region as bad – with almost two in five (37%) of adults saying it is very bad. This is also slightly worse than last month when 10% of Americans said the job market in their region was good and seven in ten (70%) said it was bad.

There is also a regional difference. Those in the East are more pessimistic about the job market with 6% saying it is good and 75% saying it is bad as are Midwesterners with 78% saying the job market is bad in their region. Southerners are more optimistic with 11% saying the job market is good and two-thirds (68%) saying it is bad.


TABLE 1
PRESIDENT OBAMA'S JOB RATING ON THE ECONOMY
"Now, turning to something different, how would you rate the overall job that President Barack Obama is doing on the economy?”
Base: All adults
		March	April	May	June	Aug	Sept	Nov
		%	%	%	%	%	%	%
	POSITIVE (NET)	47	49	46	43	39	40	34
	Excellent	13	13	10	3	9	7	6
	Pretty good	34	36	36	34	31	33	27
	NEGATIVE (NET)	53	51	54	57	61	60	66
	Only fair	30	27	30	27	25	27	30
	Poor	23	24	24	30	36	33	37
Note: Percentages may not add up exactly to 100% due to rounding.


TABLE 2
CONFIDENCE IN WHITE HOUSE ON ECONOMY
"How confident are you that the White House and the Administration will produce policies to help fix the economic crisis?”

Base: All adults
		March	April	May	June	Aug	Sept	Oct	Nov
		%	%	%	%	%	%	%	%
	CONFIDENT (NET)	57	57	55	49	53	48	44	44
	Very confident	16	17	17	12	16	13	13	9
	Somewhat confident	41	40	38	37	37	35	31	35
	NOT CONFIDENT (NET)	43	43	45	51	47	52	56	56
	Not that confident	23	21	24	25	23	25	25	25
	Not at all confident	20	22	21	27	25	27	32	31
Note: Percentages may not add up exactly to 100% due to rounding.


TABLE 3
HOUSEHOLDS’ FINANCIAL CONDITIONS 6 MONTHS FROM NOW – BY REGION
“Thinking about your household’s current financial situation, do you expect it to be better or worse in the next six months?”

Base: All adults
		Total	Region
		Total	East	Midwest	South	West
		%	%	%	%	%
	BETTER (NET)	18	15	17	20	19
	Will be much better	3	3	2	4	2
	Will be somewhat better	15	12	15	16	17
	Will remain the same	47	53	44	47	45
	WORSE (NET)	35	32	38	34	36
	Will be somewhat worse	23	21	25	22	25
	Will be much worse	11	11	14	11	10
Note: Percentages may not add to 100% due to rounding


TABLE 4
ECONOMIC EXPECTATIONS FOR THE NEXT 6 MONTHS - TREND
"Thinking about your household’s financial condition, do you expect it to be better or worse in the next 6 months?”

Base: All adults
	Feb 2008	March 2008	June 2008	July 2008	Nov 2008	Jan 2009	Mar 2009	April 2009	May 2009	June 2009	Aug 2009	Sept 2009	Oct 2009	Nov 2009
	%	%	%	%	%	%	%	%	%	%	%	%	%	%
BETTER (NET)	39	33	40	36	24	20	20	23	25	21	24	23	23	18
Will remain the same	28	28	25	25	43	48	46	46	45	45	48	48	45	47
WORSE (NET)	34	39	36	39	33	32	35	31	30	33	28	29	31	35
Note: Percentages may not add up exactly to 100% due to rounding.


TABLE 5
RATING OF CURRENT JOB MARKET IN YOUR REGION
“How would you rate the current job market of your region of the country?”


Base: All adults
		Total	Region
		Total	East	Midwest	South	West
		%	%	%	%	%
	GOOD (NET)	8	6	8	11	8
	Very good	1	1	1	1	*
	Somewhat good	8	5	7	10	7
	Neither good nor bad	18	19	14	21	17
	BAD (NET)	73	75	78	68	75
	Somewhat bad	37	42	34	38	34
	Very bad	37	34	44	30	41
Note: Percentages may not add to 100% due to rounding
Note: * indicates less than 0.5%


TABLE 6
RATING OF CURRENT JOB MARKET - TREND
“How would you rate the current job market of your region of the country?”

Base: All adults
		June 2008	July 2008	Jan 2009	April 2009	June 2009	Aug 2009	Sept 2009	Oct 2009	Nov 2009
		%	%	%	%	%	%	%	%	%
	GOOD (NET)	28	30	6	12	9	8	10	10	8
	Neither good nor bad	18	19	18	20	19	21	22	20	18
	BAD (NET)	53	51	76	68	72	71	68	70	73
Note: Percentages may not add to 100% due to rounding

Methodology

This Harris Poll was conducted online within the United States November 2 and 11, 2009 among 2,303 adults (aged 18 and over). Figures for age, sex, race/ethnicity, education, region and household income were weighted where necessary to bring them into line with their actual proportions in the population. Propensity score weighting was also used to adjust for respondents’ propensity to be online.

All sample surveys and polls, whether or not they use probability sampling, are subject to multiple sources of error which are most often not possible to quantify or estimate, including sampling error, coverage error, error associated with nonresponse, error associated with question wording and response options, and post-survey weighting and adjustments. Therefore, Harris Interactive avoids the words “margin of error” as they are misleading. All that can be calculated are different possible sampling errors with different probabilities for pure, unweighted, random samples with 100% response rates. These are only theoretical because no published polls come close to this ideal.

Respondents for this survey were selected from among those who have agreed to participate in Harris Interactive surveys. The data have been weighted to reflect the composition of the adult population. Because the sample is based on those who agreed to participate in the Harris Interactive panel, no estimates of theoretical sampling error can be calculated.

These statements conform to the principles of disclosure of the National Council on Public Polls.

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