COMMENTARY | Statistically, presidents with approval numbers below 50 percent do not get re-elected. With nine months to go before the general election, Obama's re-election stats are curiously creeping upward.
"The rise of Americans who say things are going well appears to be helping the president," CNN boasted Wednesday when their own poll finally showed Obama's approval number crawling over the 50 percent mark in nearly a year.
However, if you pay attention, the rise of voices suddenly telling Americans that "things are going well" for the president appear to be coming only from the left.
Consider this:
Where polls by far left -- CNN, CBS-New York Times, ABC-Washington Post and Democracy Corp. -- do show Obama's national approval numbers rising above 50 percent, right-leaning FOX and left-leaning Reuters-Ipsos still place Obama below 50 percent. So does Gallup and Rasmussen. The Real Clear Politics average keeps Obama below the 50 percent approval line.
Then there's the Jan. 31 Gallup poll that showed Obama's approval is over 50 percent in only 10 out of 50 states plus the District of Columbia.
Reuters, and Bloomberg, repeat Obama's claim that the economy is improving.
But a Feb. 9 poll by Gallup shows nearly 60 percent of Americans disapproving of how Obama is handling the economy and a Feb. 15 Rasmussen survey showed only 35 percent believe he's taking the country in the right direction.
With the Misery Index at a 28-year high, most Americans clearly didn't get the memo.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced in February that the unemployment rate had dropped to 8.3 percent because 243,000 new jobs were added in January.
But where the New York Post quoted Obama saying "the unemployment rate came down because people found work," the Huffington Post reported economists like Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute saying the unemployment rate fell because the 315,000 Americans who dropped out of the labor market were removed from the BLS equation.
CBS proclaims that Obama holds a "significant lead over each of his potential Republican opponents in the general election." But actual poll numbers show his lead is minimal at best.
A Feb. 10-13 CNN Research-Opinion poll placed Obama over Mitt Romney by 5 percentage points.
Rasmussen and Democracy Corp. have Obama leading Romney by only 4 percentage points.
CNN and Rasmussen show Obama ahead of Rick Santorum by seven and six percentage points respectively.
Regarding Obama's lead the word "significant" does not come to mind. Once the Republican candidate has been nominated and attention is focused only upon Obama, such a small lead could melt quickly in the heat of one-on-one debate.
In the end, when most surveys show your that candidate isn't doing well, one can always take the approach of Rosalynn Carter just before her husband Jimmy lost his re-election.
"Don't worry about polls, but if you do, don't admit it."
But if that doesn't work you can always conduct your own polls or tweak stats until you get the numbers you want.
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