AP/Gfk's 60% Approval Poll Hoax

On Wednesday, AP/Gfk released a poll that claims that President Obama has a 60% approval rating. With my usual distrust of the Lamestream Media polling, I went searching for a link to find the poll's sampling. I couldn't find one! This was a huge red flag for me. What was also a huge red flag was the current samples from Gallup (1), which put Obama at 52% approval and 40% disapproval with American adults (as of Wednesday, May 11th) and from Rasmussen (2), which put Obama at 48% approval and 52% disapproval with likely voters (as of Wednesday, May 11th). As I've said before, these two are the most trustworthy polls, historically speaking.

So let's grant the more generous Gallup number as accurate, since it also polled adults and not registered voters (or better yet the more accurate likely voters that Rasmussen uses). As I've stated before, if you're going to poll adults (half of whom are likely not registered to vote) to garner a President's approval, you may as well poll Martians and Kodiak Bears, since they have precisely the same say in an election and people who aren't registered to vote. For the sake of this discussion, however, we'll accept that 52% of adults approve of Obama (a full 4% above the number of likely voters).

AP/Gfk is claiming that Obama's approval rating is a full 8% higher than Gallup's number with adults (and 12% higher than Rasmussen's data with likely voters). This reeks of a cooked poll. And it most definitely was cooked.

Thanks to Hot Air, who did a great job of breaking down the polling sample. Here's what they found:

The Dem/Rep/Ind breakdown in this poll is 46/29/4, as AP assigned most of the leaners to the parties. That is a 17-point gap, more than twice what was seen in the 2008 actual popular vote that elected Obama. It only gets worse when independents are assigned properly. When taking out the leaners, the split becomes — I’m not kidding — 35/18/27. Oh, and another 20% “don’t know.” (3)

Wow. So the AP would have us believe that in this country, 46% of individuals lean Democrat while only 29% lean Republican? And once they stop assigning the Independents, they now claim that there are 17% more individuals who are stated Democrats over Republicans? As far as judging Obama’s chances of getting re-elected, this poll is useless. You might as well poll a sample of ten people and call it accurate.

On second thought, this poll does tell us something about Obama’s chances of getting re-elected. It says that the Lamestream Media’s internal polling and the White House’s internal polling does not look good for Obama. If 60% of people REALLY approved of the job Obama is doing, do you think AP would be creating such a cooked poll? Not likely.

The reality is Obama is on the political ropes right now. Even the capture of Bin Laden only gave Obama a tiny little bump. I broke down those polls on Monday, and as of Wednesday that bump has already disappeared! As a matter of fact, in Rasmussen’s poll (remember, with likely voters) Obama has dropped to a lower rating than the last sample before Bin Laden was killed! That’s right! In the final Rasmussen poll before Bin Laden was killed, Obama had an approval rating of 50% and a disapproval rating of 49%. The first 3 day sample after Bin Laden’s death had Obama’s approval precisely the same, 50% approval, 49% disapproval. Less than a week later, Bin Laden’s death, Obama’s approval rating is down to 48%, with a 52% disapproval rating. That not only did 2% of people change their minds in less than two weeks, but an addition 1% went from being unsure to disapproving. That’s a 3% shift in less than two weeks.

Obama’s back in a free fall, and since Obama’s too much of an ideologue to actually do the things that will help the economy, you know, like cut taxes and reduce regulations on businesses so that those businesses become comfortable and start hiring. He’s not going to allow widespread oil drilling which, as Herman Cain stated last week, will cause the “evil” oil speculators to speculate DOWN instead of up, not to mention will cause an increase in supply. Despite what our supposedly brilliant President would have us believe, the Law of Supply and Demand is indeed a fact. When you increase supply and demand remains the same, prices drop.

Obama is heading for an electoral beating in 2012. So let’s focus on getting a real Conservative, because right now we can really one elected. 2008 may have been there time. 2012 is ours.

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(1) Gallup Daily: Obama Job Approval

(2) Rassmussen: Obama Approval Index History

(3) And the award for the most ridiculous poll sampling goes to …