Winds of Change

Michael Barone notes the most recent Quinnipiac poll from Ohio:

The latest Quinnipiac poll from Ohio shows Barack Obama’s job rating at just 49%-44% positive, down sharply from 62%-31% in early May. That’s a sharp and surprising drop. In the race for the Senate seat left open by Republican George Voinovich, Republican Rob Portman is running better than in previous Quinnipiac polls. He now trails Lieutenant Governor Lee Fisher 37%-33% and Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner 35%-34%. In three previous Quinnipiac polls this year Portman trailed both of them by an average of 39%-31%, so this is also a significant change. Other previous polls showed similar results.

What to make of this? This is just one poll, and thus a possible outlier. But if the trend it suggests is in fact real, this suggests trouble for Obama and the Democrats in the industrial heartland.

And not only there. Today’s Rasmussen survey, a likely voter poll, shows President Obama’s “approval index,” the difference between those who strongly approve and strongly disapprove of his performance, at -3, the worst showing of his administration so far. Likewise, Obama’s 52 percent approval rating in today’s survey is the lowest since his inauguration.

In Congress, “moderate” Democrats–a term that generally means liberal Democrats who come from moderate districts–are growing increasingly nervous about cap and trade, socialized medicine and the Obama/Reid/Pelosi deficit spending spree.

Hope and change will be on the ballot in 2010 and 2012.

Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.

Responses