We Wish You Well

According to the recent CNN/ORC poll, 67% of Americans say they are rooting for Obama's policies to succeed, including 92% of Democrats, 66% of independents, and 39% of Republicans, while just 25% say they are rooting for his policies to fail. Though the 67% is down from 86% in March 2009 and 71% in December of that year, it's up from 61% in December of 2010. But, per that same poll, just 36% believe that Obama's policies will succeed, with 59% expressing the opinion that they are likely to fail. That 36% is way, way, down from 64% in March '09, 52% in December '09, and 44% in December '10.

That gap, those who apparently want the President's policies to succeed but don't believe they will, is what I find interesting. (I'm assuming no one thinks Obama will succeed but wants him to fail.) Originally that gap was 22%, then 19%, then 17%, and now it's 31%. Roughly speaking that's the middle third of the electorate right now. So the question is, what's up with these people? Are they people who might say, "well, I'm always rooting for America to succeed, so I'd love it if I turn out to be wrong and Obama's policies do end up working, but I just think his policies are the wrong ones"? Or, conversely, "I support Obama's policies and (obviously) hope they succeed, but believe that the system/the Republicans won't allow him to succeed in pursuing them"? Or some mix of the two, perhaps just a general desire for the world to get better but a general belief that it's not going to any time soon. My guess is that most of the additional 10% in this group this year are not of the more-or-less Republican persuasion, who "hope" for Obama's policies to succeed just because they want the world to get better, but oppose him substantively.

In any event, I think it's pretty clear that Obama's task is to get these people to vote for him. That means convincing people that they ought to like his policies better than Mitt Romney's policies, and convincing those people that his failures are not his own fault, and telling those people that the thing to do to voice their frustrations with the lousy state of things is to vote to re-elect him and also vote against Congressional Republicans, whose fault the failures are.