Likely voters say Obama even worse than Republicans-Quinnipiac

• 7/22, "Obama girl is nowhere to be found," WSJ by John Fund

Re: Quinnipiac Poll's latest results. "For the first time in the survey's history, Americans believe by a 48% to 40% margin that President Obama doesn't deserve re-election. Almost as stinging,

• a plurality believe the country would have been better off if John McCain had beaten Mr. Obama in 2008.

The Quinnipiac Poll is pored over by political observers because it has a good predictive record and because its large sample size of nearly 2200 people implies a much smaller margin of error than most surveys -- around 2 percentage points.

Mr. Obama's approval rating continues to slide, and is dragging his party down. While last July Mr. Obama had a 57% positive rating, Quinnipiac now pegs him at just 44% approval -- a number below President Bill Clinton's approval rating just before his party lost control of Congress in 1994. When asked which party they plan to vote for this November,

• likely voters in the Quinnipiac survey picked Republicans by 43% to 38%.
  

• This was despite an expressed lack of confidence in the ability of Republican leaders in Congress to tackle the nation's problems.

Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, says the warning signs for Mr. Obama include the fact that voters now turn thumbs-down on him on all major aspects of his presidency. Only 39% rate him positively for his handling of the economy, only 43% on foreign policy,

• a mere 30% on his illegal immigration stance and only 41% like his Gulf oil spill policy. Even his pick of Elena Kagan for the Supreme Court is approved by voters by only 46% to 34%.

Mr. Brown is careful to note that events can move quickly and "a year is a lifetime in politics." But the 2010 mid-term election is just over three months away, and Mr. Brown thinks the president should now be worried about 2012 as well, "Incumbents with only a 40% re-elect number bear watching," he says."

• My guess about the title is that the key to Obama's winning was single women. 70% of all single women voted for him. ed.
  
• (If John McCain ever ran again, he'd do his best to lose again. As would Gingrich and the others whose real constituency is the media. ed)