By James Call
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Tallahassee, FL – President Barack Obama is losing support among Florida voters; especially among independents a poll released Thursday shows. James Call reports fifty percent of voters in a Quinnipiac University poll said, Obama would not deserve a second term were the election held today.
There's been a sharp decline in the President's approval rating since a May survey following the killing of Osama Bin Laden. And the recent debate over raising the nation's debt ceiling did not help the President's standing, according to the Quinnipiac Polling Institute. Peter Brown is the Institute's assistant director
"In the last week, Mr. Obama's job approval has been roughly 44-percent approved in Florida, 50-51 percent disapproved depending on whether the person was polled before or after the debt ceiling deal. But in either case the numbers are statistically the same and this represents a fairly solid drop from the end of May when the numbers were essentially reversed."
It appears Obama is losing support among independents. Sixty-one percent of independents said they now disapprove of the president's performance compared to 45-percent in May. Yet, despite those numbers, in a hypothetical match up with potential Republican candidates, only Mitt Romney gives the president a strong challenge; both were favored by 44-percent of respondents. However, Brown cautions against reading too much into voters attitudes concerning an election more than a year away.
"What matters is what the conditions will be in November 2012 and how voters will feel about the president then and the deal he made then. We all like to watch he is up he is down numbers. But what really matters is how voters feel in 15 months."
The deal Brown referred to is the agreement to raise the nation's debt ceiling. And while 50-percent of respondents said they approve of it, just two-percent said they were enthusiastic and nearly a quarter of independents said the deal made them angry. Quinnipiac survey 1,417 Florida voters between July 27 and August 2. the survey's margin of error is 4.3-percent.