It’s no secret that President Barack Obama’s approval ratings have dipped in Pennsylvania.
Now, not only do Pennsylvanians find fault in Obama, a majority of voters want the next president to take the country in an entirely different direction.
A new Quinnipiac University poll finds Obama with just a 44 percent approval rating in the blue Keystone State. More than half (58 percent) of voters hope to see a shift away from Obama’s policies in 2016.
In fact, less than a quarter of Pennsylvania voters (21%) say that Obama’s policies have helped them personally, compared to 34% who feel hurt by them and 44% who feel no difference.
A larger number, 40 percent, believe that Obama has helped boost the economy, while 37 percent think the opposite and 19 percent say the president hasn’t made a difference.
Half of Pennsylvania voters oppose the Affordable Care Act, while 44% support it. However, only a quarter, 26%, want to repeal the law entirely. A total of 59% support keeping the law in place following some minor or major changes.
Obama’s proposal to provide free tuition for community college at the expense of the federal government took some heat, as well. Just 44 percent support the proposal, while 52 percent oppose it.
On tax policy, however, Obama and Pennsylvania voters see more eye-to-eye. A solid majority (62%) of voters support increasing taxes for the wealthy to help ease the tax burden of the middle class, a proposal Obama recently made in his 2016 fiscal budget. Just 33% oppose this policy.
The Quinnipiac survey was conducted from Jan. 22 through Feb. 1 as a part of the Swing State Poll. The project focuses on voters from Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania — no presidential candidate since 1960 has won without carrying at least two of these states.
The poll questioned 881 voters in Pennsylvania. The margin of error is +/- 3.3 percent.
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3 Responses
I agree with KSJW, the terms “wealthy” and “middle-class” need to be better defined or not used in polling. This was especially true when Obamacare was touted and sold to the public. A family making $90k a year is not wealthy. They have enough to buy a middle class house, 2 cars and take care of their kids, but not much extra beyond that. I wouldn’t consider them wealthy, and in fact are most likely blue collar workers. Yet, that’s what was sold to the public.
The problem I always have with polls of this sort is that it ends up grouping the liberal Warren wing with conseratives, and implicitly treats them as a homogenius ideological group. Given the support for increased taxes on rich people (which is such an easy way for Democrats to get support, when abstracted, that it’s practically the equivalent of a political cheat code….up down up down, blame rich people) it seems like some people probably want that “new direction” to be a less pragmatic moderate liberalism than what Obama has generally supported. It’s the same way when people say they don’t support Obamacare. Sure, many don’t like it because of government expansion (or fox news talking points), but a lot of the Warren liberals I know don’t like it because it’s too centrist. They wanted a public option or a single payer system that isn’t a giant subsidy to big health insurers. These numbers really don’t tell us anything. So i guess really I’m the fool for bothering to read this and comment.
“On tax policy, however, Obama and Pennsylvania voters see more eye-to-eye. A solid majority (62%) of voters support increasing taxes for the wealthy to help ease the tax burden of the middle class, a proposal Obama recently made in his 2016 fiscal budget. ”
Most people see themselves as “middle class” and not “wealthy”. The terms need to be defined for such polling to make any sense.