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Opinion: Good thing Obama says he disregards polls; He wouldn’t like these

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While you were searching for Easter eggs (you missed one behind the books, bottom shelf), we were searching for recent items for the Monday morning poll basket.

President Obama recently appeared to endorse offshore oil drilling in certain areas, though any oil and gas production is years away. This poll found an overwhelming majority of Americans agree on the need for offshore drilling and a clear majority support it off the entire U.S. coastline. They would include California and New England, strongly Democratic areas that Obama still excludes.

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Now that Obama has signed his beloved healthcare legislation and despite his continued stumping for the measure, CBS News finds a) the stumping has been ineffective, b) most Americans don’t like the bill (53%), c) many expect the quality of care to decrease while costs continue to increase and d) few see anything in it for them. Other than that, it’s a huge public relations success.

As another result of the passage and preceding rancorous healthcare debate, Rasmussen Reports finds that 53% of Americans now say they trust Republicans more with this traditionally Democratic issue, while 37% still trust that party.

As yet another result, Obama’s overall approval rating has now hit the lowest point since he....

...took office -- 44% -- which is down five points since before he signed the healthcare bill and down 24 points since his poll high last April.

On healthcare alone, the president’s disapproval rating is 55% and approval just above one-in-three (34%).

The RealClearPolitics average has Obama’s approval at 47.5% and disapproval at 46.1.

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A USA Today/Gallup Poll finds 44% of Americans believe healthcare will worsen as a result of Obama’s healthcare bill vs. 34% who think it will help; 55% believe Obama’s bill will worsen healthcare costs, 29% help; 61% believe Obama’s bill will worsen the federal deficit, 23% improve; and 46% believe Obama’s bill will worsen the economy while 35% think it will help.

The good news for Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is that Americans’ opinion of her hasn’t changed much recently; the bad news is they still don’t like her much.

Gallup finds that at the beginning of her House control in 2007, the first female speaker’s approval was two times as favorable as unpopular, 44%-22%.

Today, her favorable rating has slipped to 36% while her unfavorable rating has shot to 54%.

Today, Senate Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid’s favorable rating is 29%, unfavorable 45%.

All the fighting over healthcare the last year while so many Americans said their top concern was the economy has now resulted in Democrats losing their large edge on the economy. Last summer, CNN/Opinion Research found, 52% of Americans knew Democrats would handle the economy better than Republicans (39%).

Today it’s flipped to 48-45 in the GOP’s favor.

On handling terrorism, the gap is even wider: Republicans 50%, Democrats 40%.

As for non-politics, now that we have the very first game of the Major League Baseball season out of the way (Red Sox 9, Yankees 7), a plurality of Americans has already decided that the New York team will win another World Series. So why even bother with Obama’s first pitch in Washington today or the rest of the season?

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-- Andrew Malcolm

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