Obama's Poll Numbers are Up, but Most White Voters Are Still on the Outs
US President Barack Obama attends the East Asia Summit Plenary Session at the Myanmar International Convention Center in Myanmar's capital Naypyidaw on November 13, 2014.
Photographer: Christophe Archambault/AFP/Getty ImagesLike George W. Bush, Barack Obama is heading into his penultimate State of the Union after an election that ended his party's (partial) control of Congress. Bush spent the period between his midterms and the big speech laying groundwork for the Iraq surge. Obama reacted to his loss by basically ignoring it, moving ahead with what Republicans call an "executive amnesty" and ending the freeze with Cuba.
Like Bush, Obama's going into the SOTU with an underwater approval rating. Yet according to RealClearPolitics's average of polls, Obama is in far better shape than Bush was. At this point in his second term, Bush's net negative approval rating was 22 points. According to the same aggregator, Obama's underwater by only 6 points. He's recovered from a poorly timed autumn 2014 swoon and settled in at an approval rating of around 45 percent, and one new poll puts him at 50 percent. Bush was chugging along at 37 percent.