Obama’s Popularity Dips Underwater; For Romney, a Faint Favorability Bounce

Sep 4, 2012 6:30pm
By Gary Langer

ABC News - Barack Obama approaches his nomination for a second term with the lowest pre-convention personal popularity of an incumbent president in ABC News/Washington Post polls since the 1980s. He’s also at his lowest of the year among registered voters, with trouble among women.

Just 47 percent of registered voters in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll see Obama favorably overall, down 7 percentage points from his recent peak in April, while 49 percent rate him unfavorably. He’s numerically underwater in this group for the first time since February.

See PDF with full results, charts and tables here.

The decline has occurred entirely among women registered voters – from 57-39 percent favorable-unfavorable in April to a numerically negative 46-50 percent now. That’s Obama’s lowest score among women voters – a focus of recent political positioning – in ABC/Post polls since he took office. Unusually, his rating among men, 50-47 percent favorable-unfavorable, is numerically better than it is among women, albeit not by a significant margin.

The result is not the only sign of the work ahead for Obama among women. In a separate ABC/Post poll last week, he led Romney among women registered voters in vote preference by just 6 points, 49-43 percent. In 2008, Obama won women by 13 points, 56-43 percent.

As if misery loves company, Mitt Romney’s favorability rating remains numerically lower even than Obama’s in this poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates. Nonetheless Romney does show a faint convention bounce, a 5-point gain in favorability among all adults vs. a week ago. (Gallup, separately, today reported no bounce for Romney in the horse race, a different measurement than favorability.)

Among all Americans, 40 percent now see Romney favorably, 47 percent unfavorably – better than last week’s 35-51 percent, albeit still underwater. Among registered voters, though, the change from last week is too slight to reach statistical significance – a scant +3 points favorable, -3 unfavorable, from 40-51 percent then to 43-48 percent now. (Registered voters divided evenly on Romney, 44-44 percent, in May.)