President Barack Obama's approval ratings have now hit their highest levels in more than seven years. Obama's 57 percent vote of confidence from Americans, the New York Daily Newsreported Wednesday, makes him "one of the most popular" outgoing Presidents ever. The CNN/ORC poll gives Obama his highest marks since September 2009, when he hit 58 percent just eight months after being sworn in.
The latest poll, including just over 1,000 citizens between Nov. 17 and Nov. 20, found that Obama's current favorability rating (59 percent) is also at its highest level since 2009. As the Daily Newsexplained in their dissection of these fresh stats, the powers of comparison really put these numbers into perspective. Obama's predecessor, for example, left office with an end-of-term approval rating of just 22 percent.
Speaking with the New Yorker this week about the potential impact on his legacy at the hands of the president-elect, Obama named the Affordable Care Act as the "most vulnerable" of his accomplishments in the years ahead. "Obviously, the Affordable Care Act, I think, is most vulnerable, because that has been a unifying bogeyman for Republicans over the course of the last six years," Obama said. "In the minds of a lot of the Republican base, it is an example of a big government program designed to take something from them and give it to someone else who is unworthy."
That assessment is false, Obama noted, because the 20 million estimated Affordable Care Act beneficiaries also include some of the president-elect's biggest supporters "even if they don't make the connection." Ultimately, Obama seems convinced that "a lot" of what he accomplished during his two terms in the White House will survive the transition. "Maybe fifteen per cent of that gets rolled back, twenty per cent, but there's still a lot of stuff that sticks," Obama explained.
