President Barack Obama's refusal to visit the southern United States border in response to the illegal immigration crisis has not further damaged his low approval ratings, contradicting the predictions of some pundits, a new poll has found.
According to a
CNN/ ORC International poll conducted July 18-20 of 1,012 adults, the president's approval rating stands at 42 percent, broadly unchanged since March, and in line with most national public polls.
"When Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in 2005, the biggest impact on attitudes toward George W. Bush came in the number who said that he could manage the government effectively. That number dropped 10 points, and no other personal quality measured at that time changed as much," said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.
"Using that as a definition of a 'Katrina moment,' it looks like Obama has not experienced a similar drop in the summer of 2014, in part because his numbers already took that hit last year, and have stabilized since then."
The survey did however find a drop of one-to-two percentage points in the number of Americans who believe Obama is a strong leader, shares their values, and cares about people, but those figures are within the poll's 3-point margin of error.
"Once again, those numbers are not good news for the White House, but the clear indication is that the president's problems pre-date the current immigration crisis along the Mexican border, or anything else that has happened this summer, and that those problems have not made things significantly worse for the President," Holland added.
Obama's approval ratings tanked during the numerous political controversies of 2013, when for the first time during his presidency a majority of the public disapproved of his job performance.
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