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The Grid

How Obama's Year 2 Approval Rating Stacks Up

Jan 15, 2010 – 2:31 PM
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(Jan. 15) -- What a difference a year can make. President Obama's approval rating, which started out at 64 percent in the Gallup poll taken last January, has fallen to 50 percent. It's one of the weakest numbers seen over the last 65 years for a president heading into his second year in office. But, if it's any consolation to Obama, a 14-point slide seems mild compared to Harry Truman's 34-point plunge in Gallup's job approval survey during his first year as president.

First-year numbers aren't a reliable predictor of a president's popularity at the end of his term. Approval for Obama's immediate predecessor, George W. Bush, was mostly in the 50- to 60-percent range until right after the 9/11 attacks, when it jumped as high as 90 percent. But during his final months in office, amid two wars and an economic crisis, Bush's approval bottomed out at 25 percent. Ronald Reagan, on the other hand, started at 51 percent, slipped to 49 after a year and ended up leaving office with a 63 percent approval rating, according to Gallup.

The ratings below are from the first month of each president's first and second year in office.

Source: Gallup
Filed under: The Grid
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