Thirty-eight percent of independents approve of the job Barack Obama is doing as president, the first time independent approval of Obama has dropped below 40% in a Gallup Daily tracking weekly aggregate. Meanwhile, Obama maintains the support of 81% of Democrats, and his job approval among Republicans remains low, at 12%. … Over the past year, Obama has lost support among all party groups, though the decline has been steeper among independents than among Republicans or Democrats. … Overall, 46% of Americans approve of the job Obama is doing as president in the June 28-July 4 aggregate, one point above his lowest weekly average.
Obama, like any winning Democratic presidential candidate, put together a coalition of independents and core liberals. That has now unraveled, as independent voters have come to see him not as a post-partisan, fiscally responsible, and coolly efficient leader but rather as a hyper-partisan and statist liberal who’s not all that competent.
This doesn’t mean that Obama can’t recover the critical bloc of independent voters or that the Republicans have a lock on this segment of the electorate. But it does mean that Obama will have to alter his agenda substantially or face the collapse of his and his party’s political fortunes.
