Gallup's Analysis of Race and Approval Rating

11/29/2009, by Proloy Bhatta

HIGHLIGHTS

• Approval among whites dropped to 39% from 61%.
• Approval among blacks unchanged in the 90s.
• Although comparable, Obama's trendline is much worse among whites and much better among non-whites than Clinton.

We recently wrote an article describing how Obama's approval rating (AR) is currently sliding due to sliding support from Independents.

This has been due to the fact that there has yet to be a significant drop in support among Democrats and Obama already lost his support from Republicans back in July.

Gallup has produced a very lengthy analysis of race and AR.

And while reading Gallup's article on the matter, I thought it was a bit alarmist to solely focus on the fact that Obama's AR has dropped to 39% among whites because it is still highly party dependent... i.e. white Democrats still support the president at a 76% clip.

Black approval of Barack Obama has remain unchanged since his first full week in office and support from Hispanics has not had a significant drop.

Those are the raw numbers but it is still highly party dependent. Obama's AR has dropped double digits among white Democrats but still remains strong at 76%.

Agreeing that it is highly party dependent, Gallup compared Obama's numbers to Clinton.

It is important to note that this pattern is not unique to Obama. For example, Bill Clinton averaged 55% job approval during his presidency, including 52% among whites but a much higher 76% among nonwhites and 82% among blacks.

Although comparable, Obama's trendline is much worse among whites and much better among non-whites than Clinton.

In the end, I was quite pleased with the article because it highlighted something many pollsters are afraid to -- race. And it highlights a potential social problem facing America at the moment.

What are the social ramifications of a country that has folks of one race highly sympathetic to their leadership while another highly critical of it?

Contra Costa Times published an article yesterday that was entitled "Hate crimes rise across the country and in Humboldt". USA Today published an article on the 23rd entitled "Hate crimes against blacks, religious groups rise".

"There is this kind of extremism going on," says Hilary Shelton, director of the NAACP Washington bureau. He says Obama's election and the recession led to a backlash against blacks as some people look for someone to blame for hard economic times. - USA Today

Although the quote from the USA Today supplements my concerns with the data. I don't agree with what Shelton had to say. The USA Today's article was referring to the increase in hate crimes from 2008 -- Obama was not elected yet.

Here is the USA Today quote specifically mentioning the year 2008.

The number of crimes against black people and members of religious groups increased in 2008, making up a growing share of incidents motivated by bias, the FBI reported Monday.

But if the economy continues to struggle and the divide between non-whites and blacks widen, the results may be grim.