Daily Presidential Tracking Poll

Friday, May 24, 2013

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Friday shows that 49% of Likely U.S. Voters approve of President Obama's job performance. Forty-nine percent (49%) now disapprove.

Today’s figures include 27% who Strongly Approve of the way Obama is performing as president and 39% who Strongly Disapprove. This gives him a Presidential Approval Index rating of -12 (see trends).

Results are updated daily at 9:30 a.m. Eastern (sign up for free daily e-mail update).

Just 20% of voters believe that low-level employees at the Internal Revenue Service's Cincinnati office made the decision to target conservative groups. Sixty-five percent (65%) think the orders came from Washington. That includes 26% who think the decision was made by someone at IRS headquarters and 39% who believe someone at the White House made the call.

Many expect there is more to come. Sixty percent (60%) think it’s likely that other government agencies also targeted conservative groups. Perhaps most stunning is the fact that even 37% of Democrats think it likely that other agencies may have been used to target conservative groups.

While the president’s Job Approval rating has held fairly steady despite two weeks of controversies, Scott Rasmussen’s weekly newspaper column shows how “the political ground is shifting under the president’s feet.”   He adds, “If you dig just a bit beneath the surface, it becomes clear that the controversies dogging the White House have had an impact.”

Just over half of voters consider all three controversies surrounding the White House to be scandals.

The controversies are a major topic on this weekend’s episode of What America Thinks. Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, joins Scott to discuss how the recent events will impact the president’s agenda and the 2014 mid-term elections. The weekly television show airs on 64 stations nationwide. Find a station near you.

If you’d like Scott to speak to your organization, meeting or conference, please contact Premiere Speakers. 

Most in Washington continue to believe that increased government spending is needed to boost the economy. Just 29% of voters share that view. Forty-six percent (46%) believe more federal spending will end up hurting the economy.  

(More below) 

Former Congressman Anthony Weiner has entered the race to become New York City’s next mayor. In the Democratic primary, Weiner starts in second place, six points behind the frontrunner Christine Quinn. Democrats pick their candidate on September 10.

Thirty percent (30%) of voters believe the country is generally heading in the right direction.

Nine-out-of-10 workers say they’d stick with a job they love rather than take a job they hate that paid more.

To get a sense of longer-term job approval trends for the president, Rasmussen Reports compiles our tracking data on a full month-by-month basis.

(More below)

Rasmussen Reports is a media company whose work is followed by millions on a wide variety of platforms. We regularly release our work at RasmussenReports.com, through a daily email newsletter, a nationally syndicated TV show, a nationally syndicated radio news service, an online video service and a weekly newspaper column distributed by Creators Syndicate.

Rasmussen Reports has been a pioneer in the use of automated telephone polling techniques, but many other firms still utilize their own operator-assisted technology (see methodology). Pollsters for Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton have cited our "unchallenged record for both integrity and accuracy."

Learn more about the Rasmussen Reports track record over the years.

Daily tracking results are collected via telephone surveys of 500 likely voters per night and reported on a three-day rolling average basis. To reach those who have abandoned traditional landline telephones, Rasmussen Reports uses an online survey tool to interview randomly selected participants from a demographically diverse panel. The margin of sampling error for the full sample of 1,500 Likely Voters is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Results are also compiled on a full-week basis and crosstabs for full-week results are available for Platinum Members.