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Pollster Zogby: Obama Goes From 'C-Minus' to 'A' in One Week
Tuesday, December 30, 2014 11:26 AM
By: Melissa Clyne
Reports of economic growth, the Internet attack on North Korea and the perception that Russia is feeling the brunt of sanctions resulted in a great week for President Barack Obama, according to pollster John Zogby, who appeared Tuesday on Newsmax TV's “America’s Forum.”
“For starts, he had the economic growth report — a substantially higher rate of growth for the gross domestic product than even economists had expected and just a good rate at five percent under any circumstances,” Zogby told host J.D. Hayworth. “In addition to that, somebody hit North Korea. We're not quite sure who and in the last couple of days we're not quite sure if they were the ones who hit us. The limited internet in North Korea went down, everybody thinks it was us and that's not a bad thing.
“Thirdly, policy and global affairs seem to be hurting Russia and it's an opportunity for the president to say the sanctions are working and Russia is more isolated. Add those altogether and it's one week in a row, but it's one week and I gave him an 'A.' ”
The grade was a leap from just a week ago when Zogby gave the president a “C-.” The jump can be attributed to the aforementioned events combined with recent presidential approval polls trending “noticeably up,” to an average of 46 percent.
Despite the good news for Obama, there’s “very little opportunity here for big movement by him, unless there's a major strike of some sort.”
“The sides are drawn regarding this president. As they were with previous presidents too after they have been in office for a while.
“For the time being, there are folks who really dislike the president enormously, there are those who like him enormously and he's a 50/50 president. Odds are that's where he'll end up barring anything unforeseen.”
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Party nominees for the White House in 2016 are still anyone’s game, he noted. While former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton continues to dominate the Democrat field, Zogby said she fell to under 50 percent in his polling for the first time.
“The good news for her is it's probably better in a crowded field for her to be under 50 percent,” he said. “That will reduce the expectations that party leaders and press will have for her. The bad news is it's not 66, 67 percent like it was. She'll have a challenger and we're going to have an old-fashioned Democratic Party internal fistfight for this nomination.”
On the Republican side, Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush also led Zogby’s poll, but not in “runaway numbers.”
“These candidates are pretty well clustered,” he said. “Bush hit over 20 percent in someone's poll and he hit 14 percent in my poll. Those are good numbers, but the Bush name, under GOP voters, is instant name recognition. What's 21 or 14 in a name that every Republican knows?”
