As Obama nears the end of his presidency, his overall approval rating has steadily risen over the last year. Today, the share approving surpasses the share disapproving by 12 percentage points.
This is among the highest share of Democratic leaners who have approved of Obama over the course of his presidency. Evaluations of Obama among Republicans and Democrats reflect a growing partisan divide in approval ratings of the president.
Now at its widest since the s, the partisan gap in approval is driven by increasingly negative views of the president among the opposition party. Average ratings of George W. This is slightly lower than it was in early , but represents a significant improvement in his ratings from late and throughout , when only about half of Hispanics approved of his job performance.
Whites have consistently expressed lower approval of Obama than blacks and Hispanics, but the share saying they approve also increased this year. Views of Michelle Obama have changed only modestly over the course of eight years, though the share who see her favorably is up 11 points from last year. While ratings of Michelle Obama are positive across all gender, race, age and educational groups, she is viewed more favorably among younger Americans, women, non-whites and those with higher levels of education.
The partisan gap in views of Michelle Obama is stark. Each party's presidential ticket did this by making a pitch for the whole: This is how I see America. This is what I think of our ideals, our history, our actions in the past and present, and our destiny moving forward into the future.
The candidate who got the most people to endorse his comprehensive vision of the nation would win the presidency, with the victor usually earning a majority of the popular vote, and sometimes an overwhelming majority, as happened in , , and But as the GOP vote share in national elections has declined since , the Republican nominee has won a majority of the popular vote in a presidential contest only once, in , and then with just George W.
Bush experimented with this approach in his re-election bid , but it is Trump who deployed it to greatest effect in , and who has governed that way since taking office. It's the politics of populism that provides the rationale and playbook here. Populism differs from democratic majoritarianism in treating only some of the people — one's own supporters — as the real people. Those who vote for the Republican are the true Americans. Those who oppose the Republican are false or fake Americans.
This approach to gaining and holding power can be remarkably effective in the right political circumstances. But it is vulnerable to a moral critique because it actively pursues the exercise of political rule by appealing to a part of the country rather than the whole of the country.
That's why, when someone of Barack Obama's stature speaks eloquently in the name of a greater and broader democratic, majoritarian whole, it stings. Interestingly, the Republican response to such criticism isn't a pledge to broaden its appeal but an angry denial of the criticism's moral gravity based on a furious effort to denigrate the messenger — to reduce the critic to the same level of partisanship, to deny his elevation and pull him down to the same moral level of the populist.
One could imagine them inverting an old line from the Obama years: "When they go high, we go low. That's the low ground on which Republicans think they can compete and win. Which is why their surest path to victory necessitates that they deny the possibility of elevation altogether. Americans also had serious concerns about privacy, though the government was not the sole focus of skepticism in this respect. During the Obama years, Americans were highly skeptical their personal information would remain private and secure, regardless of whether it was the government or the private sector that collected it.
In a survey, fewer than one-in-ten Americans said they were very confident that each of 11 separate entities — ranging from credit card companies to email providers — would keep their records private and secure.
In Germany, favorability of the U. In the United Kingdom, confidence in the U. The Obama bump was most dramatic in Western Europe, but was also evident in virtually every country surveyed between and But the U. Russian views of the U. Meanwhile, certain U. Americans, meanwhile, have become less certain of their place in the world.
The share of Americans who say it would be better if the U. Roughly half of Americans say U. About half of Americans say the U. If demographic changes are slow, technological changes can be swift. In the new millennium, major technology revolutions have occurred in broadband connectivity, social media use and mobile adoption.
With the rise of Facebook, Twitter and other apps, social media use climbed to about three-quarters of online adults by Obama also helped usher in the rise of digital video in politics, sharing his weekly address through the White House YouTube channel. By the end of his second term, YouTube had become a media behemoth with over a billion users. The rise of digital tools and social platforms has also helped bring about profound changes in the U.
Americans today access information, get news and engage with politicians in new and different ways than in — a trend underscored by the political success of Trump, whose frequent use of Twitter to communicate directly with supporters and detractors was one of the defining narratives of his campaign to succeed Obama.
In , more U. Cable TV, by contrast, remained among the most helpful sources for all other adults. In , relatively few Americans said they got their news through social media or via a smartphone or other mobile device. By , six-in-ten Americans said they got their news through social media and seven-in-ten said they accessed it through a mobile device. Print newspapers continued a long-term decline, with sharp cuts in newspaper staffing and a severe dip in average circulation. Newspaper editorial staff in the U.
While television remains a major source of news for Americans, there are signs of change. Viewership of local TV newscasts has been flat or declining for years, depending on the time of day. Overall, Americans remained extremely wary of the news media. Nearly three-quarters said in a separate survey that the news media are biased. Much of the improvement for Obama appears to come among Democrats and young people.
Among Democrats, 86 percent now approve of Obama, up slightly after 80 percent said so in February. Younger people, too, appeared to take a more positive view of Obama in the latest poll than they did in February: 55 percent of those under 50 gave his job performance a positive review after 45 percent did in the previous poll. Obama still dramatically polarizes the electorate. On other issues, views of Obama are not as rosy. People are still more likely to disapprove than approve of his handling of the U.
On each of these measures and on his handling of the economy, Obama has improved at least slightly since February.
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