Clarus Poll: Voters Rate Obama's Inner Circle: Job Approval Ratings for Administration Officials Drop Across the Board

Hillary Clinton Scores Highest, 19 Points Above Obama

WASHINGTON, Aug. 3 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A Clarus Poll of "news watchers" – a nationwide survey of registered voters who say they follow the news "closely" or "very closely" – finds that the job approval ratings of President Obama, his top aides and Cabinet officials have fallen considerably during the past seven months. 

• The July 2010 Clarus Poll shows that only two members of the Obama team, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (64 percent) and Defense Secretary Robert Gates (56 percent), were surveyed to have job approval ratings of more than 50 percent.
• Clinton, Obama's opponent in the 2008 Democratic primaries, received the highest job rating in the "news watchers" survey, but her 64 percent rating in the July 2010 poll is down 11 points since the December 2009 Clarus Inner Circle poll.  
• Gates, who is second with a 56 percent approval rating, suffered the biggest drop – down 13 points since December.
• President Obama, who scored a 45 percent job approval rating in the July 2010 poll, is down 6 points from where he was seven months ago.

"Of the nine officials tested, six have higher disapproval than approval ratings – Obama, Timothy Geithner, Janet Napolitano, Ken Salazar, Rahm Emanuel, and David Axelrod," said Ron Faucheux, president of Clarus. "President Obama's advisers suffered steeper declines over the past seven months than did the President himself."

The Inner Circle Poll was conducted July 26-27, 2010 by the non-partisan Clarus Research Group, a Washington, D.C.-based polling and research firm. The survey was not sponsored or paid for by any client, candidate or political party.

Other findings: 

• Clinton and Gates owe their higher ratings to stronger bipartisan appeal. Clinton received 45 percent approval from Republicans and 57 percent from independents. Gates scored 45 percent from both Republicans and independents.
• Both Obama and Clinton posted 90 percent approval scores among Democrats. Gates, who was first appointed to his current job by GOP President George W. Bush, received a 76 percent approval rating from Democratic news watchers.
• Obama's ratings were more politically polarized: The President received a 35 percent job approval from independents and a dismal 14 percent from Republicans. Obama won the 2008 election by drawing 52 percent of independent voters.
• In addition to Clinton and Gates, the only other administration official to have higher approval than disapproval ratings is Press Secretary Robert Gibbs (43 percent to 34 percent). 
• Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, who has been on the hot seat because of the Gulf oil spill, scored the lowest job rating (22 percent) of all those tested. 

December 2009 vs. July 2010 Inner Circle ratings: 

 * not included in December 2009 poll

POLL METHODOLOGY: Clarus Inner Circle survey interviews were conducted live via telephone calls based on a sample of 636 U.S. registered voters nationwide who said they "closely" or "very closely" follow news and world events. Those who said they follow news and world events "fairly closely" or "not closely at all" were screened out. The margin of error for the sample is +/- 3.9 percent. The survey was conducted only among news watchers because some Administration insiders who were tested are not well known to the general public. The following question was asked of respondents: "I am now going to read to you the names of a number of public officials. For each one, please tell me whether you approve or disapprove of the job they are doing…" (EACH NAME AND JOB TITLE WAS THEN READ)

For more information on Clarus, go to www.ClarusRG.com.

SOURCE Clarus Research Group