When President-elect Obama became President Obama, Gallup and other polling organizations started tracking his job approval ratings. His first rating came in at 68% for the period of January 21-23rd.
At the risk of stating the obvious, the question “How do you think President Barack Obama is doing his job?” is not the same question as "How is President-Elect Barack Obama handling his transition?"
The error gets even worse, because Halperin's suggestion of a drop from 83% to 64% doesn't even rely on unrelated polls from the same polling agency. For the 64% figure, he went to USA Today http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-02-02-poll-stimulus_N.htm#table whose January 30-Feb 1 poll shows Obama with a 64% job approval rating.
Mark Halperin and Time Magazine deserve the bulk of the criticism for coming up with and then printing this twisted analysis. Matthews & MSNBC and Cooper & CNN also deserve criticism for not bothering to vet Halperin's data and throwing it out there, in what I can only assume to be a rush in order not to be scooped by other networks.
A 19% drop in approval would be big news if it were true. Presenting this erroneous data as fact and drawing the conclusion that Obama’s approval is falling is irresponsible at best. A conspiracy theorist could easily conclude that these three media personalities and their networks/agencies were deliberately trying to create negative momentum for Obama and his new administration. At the least, this deserves a prominent retraction on air/print and an accompanying apology to viewers and to President Obama.
3
2
2
