From the conservative blog HotAir:

Rasmussen makes crosstabs available for a rolling one-week compilation of its presidential approval polling (to members), and the data there is pretty interesting. Independents only give Obama a 41% approval rating, and a 57% disapproval. Younger voters give Obama higher marks (60% approval ratings among 18-29YOs), but thirtysomethings approve 51%-49%, and the news gets worse for Obama afterwards. Likely voters in their 40s disapprove 58%, between 50 and 64 years disapprove 51%, and 65+ disapprove 55%.

Income demographics look even worse. Obama carries the under-$20K demo easily, with 73% approving, but that changes immediately in the next bracket:

$20-40K: Disapprove 52%

$40-60K: Disapprove 52%

$60-75K: Disapprove 63%

$75-100K: Disapprove 55%

Obama’s problem, ironically, isn’t that this reversal will damage him, at least not in the short term. He has over three years before he has to face voters. Unfortunately, Obama’s damaging his colleagues in Congress in exactly the demographics they need to win in the midterms. Without Obama on the ticket, the Democrats can’t rely on a big turnout among youth and low-income earners. The motivated demographics will be the ones that are angry at the hard-Left policies of the Obama administration and Congress — and right now, that looks like almost all of them, especially independents.

If we needed any evidence of this, the same report has the crosstabs for the generic Congressional ballot. Republicans lead by four points overall, but among independents, the GOP has a whopping 20-point lead, 42%-22%. The GOP wins all of the 40+ age demographics, by ten, five, and fifteen points respectively. Democrats win the youngest voters by merely four points and thirtysomethings are almost a dead heat, 40%-39% Democrats. Republicans win every income demographic except under-$20K.

Obama may have improved since yesterday, but the tea leaves don’t hold out much hope that he will bounce upward in any significant manner.

The conservative blog HotAir has an interesting methodological criticism of the ABC News/Washington Post poll released earlier today:

Let’s deal with the sample first. The poll includes 35% Democrats, 25% Republicans, and 34% independents. That would make sense — if Obama had won the election by 14 points. He won it by seven, with independents and some Republicans breaking for Obama. Here’s a hint to pollsters: if you’re tracking a bigger gap between Democrats and Republicans than we saw in the presidential election, your sample is almost certainly unrepresentative of the electorate. At least it’s improved for WaPo/ABC, which had it at a ridiculous 13-point gap in June.

The skew explains why Obama still has a 57% approval rating in this poll when Rasmussen and Zogby have him under water and Gallup has him closing in on 50%. Even with the skew, his disapproval numbers have risen sharply, especially on ObamaCare, which is practically all anyone discusses. Half of the survey respondents oppose it, with 40% strongly opposed, compared to 45% approving and only 27% strongly approving. Obama is losing the argument, and the longer it continues, the more his overall numbers will erode with it.

WaPo/ABC sees independents as the key, as should Congressional Democrats facing elections next year. At the beginning of 2009, Obama had high ratings among independents, but no longer. Only 41% now trust Obama’s judgment, down from 61% in January. They disapprove of Obama’s handling of health care by 57%, almost all of whom strongly disapprove, and the same number oppose the policy itself. Among the half of independents that say ObamaCare will affect their vote in the midterms, they swing 2-1 to saying that they will oppose candidates who backed it.

Over at National Review’s “Corner” blog, Peter Wehner has some interesting observations on President Obama’s precipitous drop in the polls:

My former White House colleague Nicholas Thompson, now vice president at the Tarrance Group, sent out an e-mail analyzing the new Gallup poll that shows President Obama with a 51 percent approval rating — the lowest of his administration. More interestingly, Obama’s approval is down 14 points from his initial rating — tying President Clinton for the biggest drop since the Eisenhower era.

For those interested, here’s how different presidents match up when comparing their initial approval rating with their average approval rating in the August of their first term: Eisenhower +6 (from 68 to 74 percent), Kennedy +4 (from 72 to 76 percent), Nixon +3 (from 59 to 62 percent), Carter -3 (from 66 to 63 percent), Reagan +9 (from 51 to 60 percent), George H. W. Bush +18 (from 51 to 69 percent), Clinton -14 (from 58 to 44 percent), George W. Bush -1 (from 57 to 56 percent), and Obama -14 (from 68 to 54 percent).

Now, a poor first year doesn’t necessarily translate into defeat in a reelection campaign (witness Bill Clinton) — just as a good first year doesn’t necessarily ensure reelection (witness Bush 41). Still, you would rather start well instead of poorly. Clinton — though he won reelection — created the conditions that allowed the GOP to take over the House of Representatives in 1994, for the first time in more than half a century. And whatever future awaits President Obama, he cannot recapture the past six months, when there was an enormous amount of good will for him. He had a chance to reshape the political landscape strongly in the favor of Democrats; instead, he has resuscitated the Republican Party far beyond what most people thought possible.