Daily Presidential Tracking Poll

Thursday, November 13, 2014

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Thursday shows that 48% of Likely U.S. Voters approve of President Obama's job performance. Fifty-one percent (51%) disapprove (see trends).

The latest figures include 25% who Strongly Approve of the way Obama is performing as president and 38% who Strongly Disapprove. This gives him a Presidential Approval Index rating of -13.

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

Is Congress going to approve the Keystone XL pipeline and put the legislation on the president’s desk for a likely veto? Most voters have long supported the Keystone project.

Obama earlier this week called for federal government regulation of the Internet. We’ll let you know how voters feel about that at 10:30 a.m. Eastern today.

Voters give a lukewarm endorsement to the president’s proposal that Iran join in the fight against the radical Islamic group ISIS, but they don't expect it to improve relations between the two countries anytime soon.

Voters are more likely to view last week’s elections as a repudiation of Obama’s party rather than an endorsement of Republicans. Democrats don’t disagree.

Only 27% think the country is heading in the right direction.

(More below)

Just over half (52%) of Americans thinks the federal government should support more mass transit projects - unless the projects lose money.

At the same time, however, very few Americans would willingly take public transportation over driving their own car somewhere, and most rarely use mass transit at all.

Fifty-one percent (51%) of Americans who drink alcoholic beverages are more likely to do so at home, while 40% are more likely to order a drink at a bar or restaurant.

(More to come)

Some readers wonder how we come up with our job approval ratings for the president since they often don’t show as dramatic a change as some other pollsters do. It depends on how you ask the question and whom you ask. 

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.

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).

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.