Gallup's Analysis of Obama Approval Rating in Jewish Community is Dishonest

A helicopter was flying around above Seattle yesterday when an electrical malfunction disabled all of the aircraft's electronic navigation and communication equipment. Due to the clouds and haze the pilot could not determine his position or course to steer to the airport. The pilot saw a tall building, flew toward it, circled, drew a handwritten sign and held it in the helicopter's window. The sign said "WHERE AM I ?" in large letters. People in the tall building quickly responded to the aircraft, drew a large sign and held it in a building window. Their sign said, "YOU ARE IN A HELICOPTER." The pilot smiled, waved, looked at his map and determine the course to steer to SEATAC (Seattle/Tacoma) airport and landed safely. After they were on the ground, the co-pilot asked the pilot how the "YOU ARE IN A HELICOPTER" sign helped determine their position. The pilot responded, "I knew that had to be the MICROSOFT building because they gave me a technically correct but completely useless answer."

That story was written about Microsoft, but could have been written about Gallup's recent report on Obama's approval rating in the Jewish community. They provided information that was technically accurate, but totally useless.

The Headline of their story was:

Jewish Support for Obama Down, but Not Disproportionately Current 13-point gap between Jewish and national support is about average

That headline is absolutely true, but its the wrong comparison.

Assuming  the overall Jewish American approval numbers are correct, Jews gave President Barack Obama a 54% job approval rating in September, down from 68% in May,  and drastically below the 83% at the beginning of 2009, but its the comparison to the general population that is disingenuous.

There is little sign that President Obama is suffering disproportionately in support among Jews; 54% approved of his job performance from Aug. 1-Sept. 15, 13 percentage points higher than his overall 41% approval rating during that time, and similar to the average 14-point gap seen throughout Obama's term.

There's the problem, Jews can't be compared with total US Voters, because they don't vote that way.  Jews are far more liberal-Democratic than the average voter.  According to Gallup US Party affiliation as of May 2011 44% of American voters are Democrats.

The latest Gallup figure I could find for Jewish party affiliation (Sept 2009) shows that American Jews are almost 50% more likely to be Democrats than the average American.

Why is this important? Because Obama's approval rating has not fallen off with Democrats as fast it has for Republicans.  Using numbers from May 2011 and August 2011 Gallup reports the Democrat approval fall off is less the total US figures. Total US fell by 20% while total Democrats fell by fell by 12%

A more reasonable national baseline to compare the Jewish vote to would be 
to create a weighted average figure based on the general population approvals but weighted by the party affiliation of Jewish voters(66% Dem, 27% GOP and 7% independents)

That weighted average comes to 63.7% approval in May and 54.9% in August a drop of  almost 9% or a -13% difference in President Obama's approval rating

At the same time Obama's approval rating amongst Jewish voters dropped from 68% to 54% a drop of 14 percentage points or -16% difference.

Based on this more realistic comparison President Obama's job approval is falling faster than the national average.  While the president enjoyed a higher approval rating this May in the Jewish community than the national average (based on Jewish party affiliation), his approval today is slightly lower than the national average.

That's where Gallup gets it wrong. By comparing the drop in Obama's approval in the Jewish community to that of the overall voter, it does a disservice to it readership and creates a dishonest story.

The old proverb says there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. Friday's Gallup look at Obama Approval Rating amongst Jewish voters has  proven that proverb to be very true.

Obama Approval Hits New LOW In Both Rasmussen and Gallup

It seems as if President Obama's bus tour and divisive political message isn't doing him much good, in the latest Rasmussen three day rolling approval poll, his approval index hit a new low -26.  Gallup has Obama's approval sinking to a new low 38%.

The Rasmussen approval index compares voters who strongly believe Obama is doing a good job to those who strongly disapprove of the job he is doing. Those who have strong opinions of a President are more likely to work for or against his reelection. Today's -26 number is the lowest that Obama has seen since his inauguration.

Note: Double click on each chart to see it larger and more clearly) 
The chart above takes a look at Obama's approval index since July 25th (his last prime time speech about the budget deal) through today.  As you can see the budget deal at the beginning of July gave the President a bump. Since then, the economic news has been awful and Obama has been on the road trashing the GOP and the Tea Party.

The strongly approve and strongly disapprove numbers show a similar trend. The 19% strongly approve percentage is also an all time low achieved just once before (8/16).

 The overall approval/disapproval percentages also tell a sad tale for Obama:

Rasmussen released other numbers that are a black cloud floating over Obama's reelection campaign, only 28% of voters trust him on the economy (25% of independents).  With the economy being the most important issue in the upcoming election, this may be an indicator that Obama's approval numbers are likely to go down.

Gallup, whose numbers tend to be a bit more favorable to Democratic candidates also shows the President at an all time low. His approval has fallen to only 38%.

There is still plenty of time between now and election day 2012.  George HW Bush  had a Gallup approval rating of 74% at this point in his Presidency.

Unfortunately for Obama and for the country, it takes longer for the massive US economy to right itself than it does to sink. And our President still has no plan to fix the economy.  Unless he does and unless it works awful fast, we will have a new president beginning January 2013.

Liberal Pollster Declares Obama's Re-election in Trouble

Liberal polling firm Public Policy Polling (PPP) is sounding the alarm, Barack Obama is in trouble. 

“There’s a very good chance Barack Obama would lose if he had to stand for reelection today,” said Dean Debnam, President of Public Policy Polling. “This is his worst poll standing in a long time and he really needs the economy to start turning around.”

Overall Obama's by a 48%-46% margin voters disapprove of the President's performance, but that is probably the best set of numbers in the study.  More Democrats are unhappy with the President's performance (16%), than Republicans who approve of him (10%).  I guess that means 10% of GOP voters have had no access to any media during the past two and a half years. The number that should be be most disturbing to the Obama-fans is the independent voters who disapprove of him by a margin of 49%-44%.

Now put those numbers in the context of this Jim Geraghty report which analyzed PPP and found some conflicts of interest, lack of transparency and Democratic-skewed methodology. In other words things could be even worse than the Daily Kos contractor, PPP is reporting.

PPP is also reporting that Mitt Romney has pulled into a tie with the President at 45%.

He leads the President by 9 points with independents at 46-37. And he earns more crossover support, getting 13% of the Democratic vote while only 8% of Republicans are behind Obama.

The other candidates are far behind Romney, but that is probably due to a lack of recognition rather than an understanding/disagreement with their policy.

Gallup is also showing a drop in support for Obama, the three-day rolling average of presidential approval reflected that Obama's approval dropped to 42%, to put that into perspective one month ago that approval rating was at 49%.

Since it is a three day average, and the first day a drop has been detected,  tomorrow's Gallup numbers for Obama may be even worse.

Rasmussen's three-day average reflects a similar drop with the President's disapproval at 54% vs 44% approval.

What is forcing Obama's numbers down? That could be best answered with the now-famous phrase, "Its the economy stupid!" and Americans are not very optimistic about the future:

Twenty-one percent (21%) of Likely U.S. Voters now say the country is heading in the right direction, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey taken the week ending Sunday, July 17. This matches the lowest level measured of Obama’s presidency and is also the lowest finding in nearly three months of weekly tracking.

Seventy-one percent (71%) of voters say the country is heading down the wrong track, the highest level of pessimism measured since mid-April. This finding has ranged from 57% to 72% since January 2009.

Certainly these numbers show that Americans are growing frustrated with Barack Obama's brand of change and if the election were held today he would be in severe trouble.  But the election won't be held today or for another year and a half, a lot can happen in that time period.

Why Gallup's Analysis of Jewish Voters is Dishonest

There it was in bold Gallup-type headlines.

Solid Majority of Jewish Americans Still Approve of Obama Changes in approval among Jews continues to reflect broader U.S. patterns.

The problem with the headline is that it is Dishonest.

Assuming  the overall Jewish American approval numbers are correct, they gave President Barack Obama a 60% job approval rating in June, down from 68% in May, but statistically unchanged from 64% in April and drastically below the 83% at the beginning of 2009, but its the comparison to the general population that is disingenuous.

Gallup's monthly trend in Jewish approval of Obama continues to roughly follow the path of all Americans' approval of the president, more generally, as it has since Obama took office in January 2009. The 14-percentage-point difference in the two groups' approval ratings in June -- 60% among U.S. Jews vs. 46% among all U.S. adults -- is identical to the average gap seen over the past two and a half years. However, the monthly graph is somewhat variable due to the lower monthly sample size of Jewish respondents (around 350).

The problem with the comparison is that Jews can't be compared with the total US Population, they are far more liberal-Democratic than the average voter.  According to Gallup US Party affiliation as of May, broke down as follows:

But the latest Gallup figure I could find for Jewish party affiliation (Sept 2009) shows that American Jews are almost 50% more likely to be Democrats than the average American.

Why is this important? Because Obama's approval rating has not fallen  of as much for Democrats as it has for Republicans.  Using numbers from April 2009 and May 2011 Gallup reports we find that the Democrat approval fall off is less than a third of the total US figures.

The Chart below is for illustrative purposes only, and not does not necessarily reflect the actual Gallup numbers which at this point are not available.  If one were to adjust the total US numbers to reflect a party split similar to that of the Jewish voters above (66% Dem, 27% GOP, 7% Independents) and compare that number to the fall off of the Jewish vote we find:

Using the May numbers (which are available but different than the ones Gallup reported today) we find that the adjusted fall off of Obama approval is much less than that of the "total US figures (21% to 34%).  We also find that the fall off of Jewish approval of President Obama is more than twice that of adjusted numbers. While I wouldn't use the exact numbers I am confident in saying that the fall off of the President's approval, is much larger than that of the equivalent general population. In other words, Gallup's main proposition is wrong.

With a major organization such as Gallup when there is a "bogus" survey, it usually is in the sample mix (i.e. weighted to heavy toward one group), or the analysis.

Without having the sample mix for Gallup, I cannot comment on that,  but the entire set-up of the analysis is misleading at best, intentionally dishonest at worst. First of all, taking a look at the approval point spread  difference as Gallup does at the start of its analysis doesn't make sense because the  Total US and Jewish Vote fall offs are working off of different bases. Ten percentage points off of 60% is a bigger hit than 10% off of 80% something that Gallup does not acknowledge.

More important is the fact that comparing President Obama's loss of approval in the Jewish community, which is 66% Democratic,  to the loss of approval of the entire population which is only 43% Democratic is not an honest comparison because the President has maintained his approval much better amongst Democratic voters.

The old proverb says there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. Today Gallup's Jewish vote survey has proved that proverb very true.