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POLITICS

44% Rate Obama’s Leadership As Good or Excellent, 37% Say It’s Poor

Voters’ views of President Obama’s leadership style have rebounded from last month’s all-time low.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey – taken on Sunday and Monday - finds that 44% of Likely U.S. Voters now give the president good or excellent marks for leadership while 37% give him poor marks as a leader. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

When he first took office in January 2009, 64% of voters nationwide gave President Obama good or excellent marks for leadership. That fell into the 40s by July 2009 and has generally remained in that range ever since.

This year, following the president’s State of the Union speech in January, 47% of voters viewed his leadership positively. A month later, that figure fell to 37%, the lowest level of confidence since he took office. The current results are up seven points since February but down three from January.

In terms of style, 15% now say the president’s leadership style is too confrontational, while 31% view it as too cooperative. A plurality (40%) of voters, however, say the president’s leadership style is about right. Fourteen percent (14%) are undecided.

Since late January 2009, the number of voters who say the president is too confrontational has ranged from a low of 13% to a high of 32%.  At the same time, the number who says he’s too cooperative has run from 17% to 38% (see monthly trends).

(Want a free daily e-mail update? If it's in the news, it's in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook.

The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on March 20-21, 2011 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

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