If you rely on CNN for your opinions, you might get the impression that most of the 12% who disapprove are PUMA's, members of NOW, and other minorities who are angry there aren't enough of their members in the cabinet. And on MSNBC last week Jack Jacobs suggested that if Obama didn't show up at one of the inaugural balls, he would lose support of the military.

My conclusion: 1) Gallop manipulates toward the right. 2) Even if they don't, 68% is amazing, considering how much the media tries to drive opinion through conflict.

i learned on abc's good morning america today that the "democratically-controlled senate" is holding up obama's nominations and heard laudatory comments about how reagan and the bushes were able to get theirs through no problem.

according to gma, if obama nominated people with clean records there wouldn't be a problem.

i am looking forward to february 17th when that crap will be permanently barred from my house.

I don't "obviously" conclude that America is center-right, despite the continued pushing of this meme. If anything, the data presented above suggest that America is center-left but that there is a very real limit to how far that left-leaning can go.

This poll is further proof of something else, and that is how effectively conservatives and the MSM have demonized the word "liberal" because while the majority of folks self identify as Democrats there isn't a poll out where the majority self identify as liberal. And usually the gap is much wider than this one. That is how the Rethugs get away with calling us a center right country when the truth is people just don't like to be labeled "liberal" not because they aren't liberal, but because it has become a dirty word. I personally don't mind being called a DFH, but I know a lot of people that do. So the one thing we need to do is regaining ownership of the word liberal and regain the framing of what that means.

This is good news... for John McCain!

Steve, you should cut that last paragraph. Sarcasm is often lost -- I'm sure you'll be quoted elswhere in all seriousness.

Great line at the end. I never really comment, but wanted to say Steve really is the best political blogger out there.

It will be interesting to see where these numbers go as the Democrats start governing.

what is clear as a bell from the graph is that the steep declines in republican identification are all a result of republicans attaining power. It shows buyers remorse every time. Republicans get elected on lies and deceptions, hiding their true agenda, corruption, and incompetence and then turn everything to crap. It would be nice if people understood this and stopped falling for republican lies, and furthermore if people realized corporate media's role in selling republican lies and deception and promoting the republican anti-Democratic, anti-liberal memes.

One would note that the Democrats have this identification despite (or perhaps because of) being called Marxists or Socialists for the last 30 or so years.

This is what happens when the opposition's rhetoric doesn't correlate with reality. Their critiques become slurs and their slurs don't resonate. Diminishing returns as it is.

What it does for Democrats, if they had any sense at all, is to inoculate them from these kinds of idiotic attacks and SHOULD clue them into what people really understand. I mean these Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents are no longer the Southern Democrat types. These are the people who identify with the activist, competent government party by choice. Even as defined by the overheated bullshit from the GOP and their supine allies in the media.

The gap is nice, but let's remember that most of that comes from despising what Republicans did and not unqualified praise of Democrats. The party needs to work hard, be honest, and serve the public interest with fewer failings to keep up the public's preferences. I'm hopeful, but keep an eye out ...

The more I look at Obama's pre-inaugural + current favorable numbers, the more I am forced to agree that the election was, indeed, corrupt; that, had the votes been counted correctly, Obama's margin of victory would have been *far* more than ~53%-46%. In reality, the final tally was probably great enough that not even the inevitable vote-flipping in favor of the GOP was enough to swing the final tally towards McCain/Caribou Barbie.

-Z

To me, the poll seems to prove that people are stupid, have inch-deep political identities, love a winner and hate those they are told to hate. People will support a war against a country they've never heard of on the flimsiest of asserted accusations, and most can't construct one single sentence regarding the differences in policy between the two political parties in the US. Draw whatever conclusions you want - people "support" "fixing" our health care system in the Us, but are one Thelma and Louise commercial away from running back into the arms of their let's-me-choose-my-own-doctor HMO.

Flubber,

Did Thelma and Louise have health insurance? In their case I don't think it mattered in the end.

I think Harry and Louise were the ones concerned about health care.

The numbers show that once again, Congress must step in to protect the American people from themselves.