49% Think Obama Good or Excellent Leader
In the wake of weeks of troubling national security news—the Boston marathon bombing, Syria’s escalating civil war and the Benghazi hearings, voters are no more confident in President Obama’s leadership than they were two months ago. But fewer now see him as too confrontational.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 49% of Likely U.S. Voters consider Obama a good or excellent leader. That's down from 55% at the start of the year, his highest positives since May 2009. Thirty-eight percent (38%) rate Obama poorly as a leader. These findings are unchanged from early March, right after the sequester spending cuts went into effect and are more in line with the president's leadership ratings in 2012 prior to Election Day. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on May 9-10, 2013 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.