CLIOPATRIA: A Group Blog
There's Other Evidence...
...but it's just so totally old
Blaring headlines and silly stories announce a stunning new finding from the Gallup Poll: the first year of Barack Obama's presidency is the most polarizing ever.
In the always magnificently awful Huffington Post, for an almost too-easy example, Sam Stein says the poll shows that Obama has "the most polarized approval ratings ever recorded during a president's first year in office."
Gallup doesn't help, tagging their report on the poll with a subhead explaining that Obama's numbers are worse than for "any prior first-year president."
And how long have "approval ratings" been "recorded" by pollsters? Funny you ask -- the sample goes all the way back...to Eisenhower.
So, yes: Barack Obama is the most polarizing president in all of American history, with one condition: you have to leave out most of American history.
You're off the hook, Honest Abe. John Adams? The Sedition Act is unrecorded by the Gallup Poll. Go in peace, dude. Well played.
Be very afraid: if Obama's poll numbers don't improve, we may be on a course for America's first ever civil war.
- diminishing Dem affiliation? by Jeff Vanke (January 26, 2010 at 8:21 AM)
- History by William Adler (January 26, 2010 at 3:42 PM)
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