Here’s the latest on the reality-check front: Just half of Americans say the American Dream still holds true. Only a quarter would want their child to run for Congress. And for all the shouting, half don’t think either political party can do much with the economy.
But at least, most say, George W. Bush isn’t running the show.
So finds a new ABC News/Yahoo! News poll, inaugurating a new polling partnership taking a fresh look at some issues in the news. One finding: For all their economic gripes, 52 percent of Americans say they’d rather have President Obama than his predecessor in control of economic policy, vs. 35 percent who’d prefer to have former President Bush in charge.
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OBAMA vs. BUSH – There are two roots of the public’s preference for Obama over Bush to run economic policy today. Obama’s better in his base: Ninety percent of Democrats prefer him, vs. 76 percent of Republicans who’d prefer a Bush encore. And independents, the swing voters in such matters, prefer Obama over Bush on the economy by a 16-point margin, 49 percent to 33 percent.
Obama also does much better vs. Bush among young adults, women, low-income Americans and members of racial minorities – reflecting partisan patterns, these being more Democratic groups.
Most strikingly, Obama’s preferred to Bush among nonwhites by 75 percent to 14 percent, while whites divide more evenly – 45 percent for Bush, 41 percent for Obama. (That’s not a statistically significant advantage for Bush among whites, given the poll’s margin of sampling error, but the sharp difference from nonwhites is impressive.)
Overall preference for Obama vs. Bush doesn’t mean most people think Obama’s doing beautifully on the economy – just 41 percent in the last ABC/Post poll approved of how he’s handling it, and as many said his policies have worsened the economy as said they’ve improved it. Instead he prevails simply in comparison to Bush, whose approval rating for handling the economy fell as low as 22 percent in an ABC/Post poll in September 2008.
Even today, more blame the economy’s condition on the Bush administration, for a lack of financial regulations that could have helped avoid the crisis, than on Obama, for failing to turn it around more effectively.
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http://abcnews.go.com/PollingUnit/page?id=11664951
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