50% Say Obama’s Policies Have Hurt the Economy

One-out-of-two Likely U.S. Voters (50%) now believe that President Obama’s economic policies have hurt the economy, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

Thirty-two percent (32%) think the president’s policies have helped the economy, while eight percent (8%) say they’ve had no impact. (To see question wording, click here.) 

Predictably, there’s a wide partisan difference of opinion. Sixty-one percent (61%) of Democrats say the president’s economic policies have been good for the economy. Seventy-seven percent (77%) of Republicans - and 56% of voters not affiliated with either party – take the opposite view and believe Obama’s policies have hurt the country economically.

Fifty percent (50%) of union members think the president’s policies have been bad for the economy. Tea Party members believe that even more emphatically, with 86% who share that view compared to 39% of non-members.

These findings come at a time when the president is pushing a new $447 billion program to create jobs. Thirty-eight percent (38%) of voters favor the plan which includes the continuation of certain tax breaks, the passage of several stalled free trade agreements with other countries and new spending for education, infrastructure like roads and bridges and the further extension of unemployment benefits. Nearly as many (36%) oppose the plan, while 26% are undecided about it.

While the president is proposing increased infrastructure spending as part of his new jobs plan, a plurality (45%) of Americans believes the government should cut spending for roads and highways until the federal budget is balanced.

(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 September 10-11, 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.