Harrisburg Patriot-News
Coming off a bitter partisan struggle over raising the nation’s debt limit, 54 percent of Pennsylvanians disapprove of the job Barack Obama is doing overall as president compared to 43 percent who approve. Close to the same number do not believe Obama deserves re-election.
The results are from a Quinnipiac University poll of 1,358 statewide voters released Tuesday morning.
While Obama’s approval is low, he does fare better than both political parties. About 2/3 of Pennsylvania voters give Republicans and Democrats each low marks for their job performance.
And if there is any thin silver lining for the president, 44 percent say he handled the debt debate better than the Republicans in Congress while 37 percent say the GOP did.
In the 2012 re-election, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney narrowly beats out Obama 44 percent to 42 percent. And former Pennsylvania U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum comes within the margin of error with Obama beating him 45 percent to 43 percent.
It’s important to note that all of these numbers for Obama are much lower than they were when Quinnipiac asked voters these questions in June.
Although they are from the same political party, U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, a Democrat facing re-election this year, has more support from Pennsylvania voters than Obama. More voters, 47 percent, would choose Casey compared to 35 percent who could choose the unnamed Republican in the 2012 Senate race. The same amount — 47 percent — believe Casey deserves re-election.
As far as his job performance goes, Casey gets high marks from 48 percent of voters while 29 percent disapprove and 23 percent don’t know. Likewise, Republican U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey gets 44 percent approval, 31 percent disapproval and 25 percent don’t know.
Read more: http://blogs.mcall.com/penn_ave/2011/08/more-pennsylvanians-disapprove-of-obama.html