Americans have grown more optimistic about the economy and the direction of the country in the 11 weeks since President Obama was inaugurated, suggesting that Mr. Obama is enjoying some success in his critical task of rebuilding the nation’s confidence, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.
These sometimes turbulent weeks — marked by new initiatives by Mr. Obama, attacks by Republicans and more than a few missteps by the White House — do not appear to have hurt the president. Americans said they approve of Mr. Obama’s handling of the economy, foreign policy, Iraq and Afghanistan; fully two-thirds said they approve of his overall job performance.
By contrast, Republican fortunes have dropped in the first weeks of the Obama presidency; just 31 percent of respondents said they had a favorable view of the Republican Party, the lowest in the 25 years the question has been asked in New York Times/CBS News polls.
It is not unusual for new presidents to enjoy a period of public support. Still, the durability of Mr. Obama’s support contrasts with that of some other new presidents, and is striking at a time when anxiety has gripped households across the country and Mr. Obama has alternately sought to rally Americans’ spirits and warn against economic collapse as he seeks Congressional support for his programs. The poll found that 70 percent of respondents are very or somewhat concerned that someone in their household will be out of work and looking for a job over the next 12 months; 40 percent said they had cut back spending on luxuries, and 10 percent on necessities; 31 percent said they had cut both.
For all that, the number of people who think the country is heading in the right direction has jumped from 15 percent in mid-January, just before Mr. Obama took office, to 39 percent today, while the number who think it is heading in the wrong direction has dropped from 79 to 53 percent. That is the highest percentage of Americans who said the country is heading in the right direction since February of 2005, the second month of the second term of former President George W. Bush.
The percentage of people who think the economy is getting worse has declined from 54 percent just before Mr. Obama took office to 34 percent today. At the same time, 20 percent now think the economy is getting better, compared with 7 percent in mid-January. “It’s psychology more than anything else,” Arthur Gilman, a Republican from Ridgewood, N.J., said in a follow-up interview after participating in the Times/CBS News Poll. “President Obama has turned around the negative feeling in this country. He’s given everything an impetus because he’s very upbeat, like Roosevelt was. It’s too soon to tell if the spending stuff works but some things have improved.”
Frank Henwood, an independent from Amarillo, Texas, said: “Hopefully, the stock market has bottomed out and is on the rise. Once the stock market shapes up, I think the economy will come back and then jobs will come back and people will start buying automobiles made in America.”
With the poll finding that an overwhelming number think the recession will last a year or more, Mr. Obama may find he has an unusually deep well of patience to draw on. The poll found that Mr. Obama shoulders virtually none of the public blame for the economic crisis: 33 percent blame Mr. Bush, 21 percent blame financial institutions, and 11 percent blame Congress.
By a margin of 63 to 20, voters said they trusted Mr. Obama more than they trust Congressional Republicans to make the right decision about the nation’s economy.And by a margin 61 to 27, they said they trusted Mr. Obama to keep the nation safe, typically a Republican strong-suit, the poll found. Nearly one-quarter of Republicans said that they trusted Mr. Obama more than Congressional Republicans to make the right decisions about the economy.
“As far as acting like adults and getting things done, the Democrat Party has done better,” said Rachel Beeson, an independent voter from Hawaii. “The Republican Party seems to have decided that they are going to turn down anything that comes out of the White House and nothing will get done that way. “
The poll suggested evidence of continued political division: 57 percent of people who said they voted for John McCainlast November said they disapproved of Mr. Obama’s performance. While Mr. Obama’s budget proposal enjoys the support of 56 percent of Americans overall, sentiments splinter along party lines: 79 percent of Democrats said Mr. Obama’s budget had the right priorities, compared with 27 percent of Republicans.
The survey was conducted Wednesday through Sunday, while Mr. Obama was traveling through Europe to attend the Group of 20 summit of the world’s largest economies. Two-thirds of respondents said that leaders of other countries around the world have respect for Mr. Obama; when a similar question was asked in July 2006, 30 percent of respondents said foreign leaders had respect for Mr. Bush.
The national telephone poll was conducted with 998 adults. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.
Even as Americans strongly support their new president, they do not necessarily support all of his initiatives. In one example of that, 58 percent disapprove of Mr. Obama’s proposal to bail-out banks. But the percentage of respondents who think that it will benefit all Americans, rather than only bankers, has jumped from 29 percent in February to 47 percent now, signaling that the White House might be making some progress in changing perceptions of the plan.
And at a time when Mr. Obama has proposed a vast expansion in government spending and programs, 48 percent of all Americans said they prefer a smaller government providing fewer services, while 41 percent prefer a bigger government providing more services.
Americans remain concerned about the growing national debt that is being passed on to future generations, but in the face of the current economic troubles, they are divided over whether it is necessary to increase debt. Forty-six percent said the government should not incur further debt, but 45 percent of those surveyed said the government should spend money to stimulate the economy even though it will increase the budget deficit.
At a time where there is evidence of a surge of populism among many Americans in response to abuses on Wall Street, respondents by more than a two-to-one margin said that Democrats care more about the needs of people like themselves than Republicans do. Seventy-one percent of Americans said Mr. Obama cared more about the interests of ordinary people than about large corporations.
Mr. Obama’s push to increase income taxes on people making over $250,000 a year is supported by 74 percent of respondents. When presented with the possibility that taxing those in the higher income bracket might hurt the economy, 39 percent of those polled still support the plan.
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