Obama's response to the Tucson shooting may have contributed to his shift in popularity. Fickle independents return to Obama

President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats learned at least one big lesson in the November elections: What the independent voter gives, the independent voter can also take away.

But now, the same temperamental bloc that threw House Democrats out of power appear to be in a giving mood again - at least as far as Obama is concerned.


That unpredictable, cranky group of voters who helped carry the president into office two years ago before turning against him in dramatic fashion, may be turning back in Obama’s direction even more quickly.

A series of national polls released over the last week shows Obama’s approval rating on the upswing among voters who don’t affiliate with either political party.

In two polls, Obama’s standing with independents jumped by double digits. An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll showed him clocking 46 percent approval among independents - an 11-point increase since December.

A CNN/Opinion Research survey was even more sanguine, showing a 15-point leap for Obama, to 56 percent approval.

A third poll, conducted for CBS and the New York Times, gave the president a more conservative, 43 percent approval number among independents. But even that poll showed him in net positive territory. Just 39 percent of independents said they disapproved of Obama’s performance, marking a startling reversal since October, when his disapproval rating was 15 points higher with independents than his approval rating.

Analysts point to a number of explanations for Obama’s rise, including his reassuring response to the Tucson shooting, his willingness to cut deals with the congressional GOP and the presence of a new political foil for Obama, in the form of emboldened conservative Republicans.

The bigger picture is that Obama seems to be getting at least something of a second chance with a hugely influential slice of the electorate that abandoned Democrats in droves during the 2009 and 2010 elections.

Republican pollster David Winston acknowledged that Obama has had a good run with the political middle lately.

“There are two events that have occurred that are significant and I think people are trying to think through: He agreed to work with the Republicans to extend the Bush tax cuts and, two, he delivered a good speech in Tucson,” Winston said.

But Winston emphasized that while independent voters may be in the political center, they aren’t in the “ideological center,” meaning that even under the best of circumstances they’ll be a difficult group for Obama to hang onto.

“Independents are a center-right group,” he said. “That’s why Republicans have been able to put together majorities and that’s the challenge to the president.”

Democratic strategist Dan Gerstein had a similar assessment of why Obama’s numbers have improved, arguing that Obama is again projecting the even-handed image that led independent voters to like him in the first place - and that he began to lose over the course of his first two years in office.

“Without apportioning blame for the lack of bipartisanship, the takeaway for a lot of voters was basically, the house is on fire and we’re bickering about which tchotchkes to save,” Gerstein said, citing the protracted debate over health care that unfolded amid economic stagnation.

“I don’t think they’re necessarily looking at Democrats again. They’re looking for leadership,” he continued. “Why has Obama rebounded? First and foremost, he heard the message about working together and that there has to be more compromise.”

The fact that independent voters are even relatively upbeat about the president is striking, given what a clear, negative judgment they issued on his party last November.

After backing Obama by 8 percentage points in 2008, independents supported Republicans by a 19-point margin in the 2010 congressional elections.

On a state-by-state level, some of the swings were even more stunning. In Wisconsin, independents voted for Obama by 19 points in 2008. In the state’s 2010 Senate race, they broke by 13 points for now-GOP Sen. Ron Johnson – a 32-point shift in just two years.

In Pennsylvania, independents went from supporting Obama by 19 points to backing Republican Senate candidate (and now Sen.) Pat Toomey by 10 percent.

Other presidential battlegrounds, including Ohio and Florida, showed similar movement among independents in 2010. And a year earlier, Virginia independents went from supporting Obama by 1 percentage point to backing Republican Bob McDonnell for governor by a 33-point margin.

That Obama’s numbers are even slightly bouncing back among these voters is a testament to their volatility.

Tom Jensen of Public Policy Polling, a Democratic-leaning firm that’s one of the few to show Obama’s approval with independents still underwater, said it’s hard for any politician to cement in place their standing with independent voters.

“Independents are anti-politician in general,” Jensen said. “We find very few elected officials who are particularly popular with them and that’s partly because choosing not to identify with either major political party is a general sign of skepticism toward our political system and the politicians who fuel it.”

That’s especially hard for Democrats, Jensen argued, because independents are “a right leaning group to begin with and that means the deck is stacked against Obama being popular with them from the start.”

PPP continues to show Obama with just a 37 percent approval rating among independents, compared with a 57 percent disapproval rating. That’s the most pessimistic recent polling result for the president with this group of voters.

But a survey from ABC News and the Washington Post also placed Obama’s approval rating in net negative territory with unaffiliated voters, showing 46 percent approving of his performance and 51 percent disapproving.

And while Gallup gives Obama a solid, 46 percent approval rating with independents the pollster recorded only a modest, single digit increase since mid-December, when Obama was at 41 percent.

Still, coming a few months after devastating midterm elections, when Democrats lost 63 House seats, six Senate seats and a half-dozen governorships, even somewhat more stable numbers are an improvement for the president’s party - and a sign that independents are once again up for grabs.

“Independent voters are the ultimate jump ball in politics. They’re up on the rim, rolling around, sometimes they fall in the hoop, sometimes they don’t,” said Ari Fleischer, who served as White House press secretary under President George W. Bush. “I see no evidence that they have locked in on anybody or anything, including Republicans, Barack Obama or Democrats.”

Summing up Obama’s recent gains, Fleischer added: “He tipped the independent ball into the hoop for a week.”

Obama may also be benefiting from the fact that the same Republican antagonists who spent two years hammering him on health care, spending and the economy now have a responsibility to govern.

In the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, the Republican Party’s net favorability rating sank by 11 points – from 28 percent favorable, 35 percent unfavorable in December, to 23 percent favorable, 41 percent unfavorable this month.

Democrats, meanwhile, returned to near-parity in the poll, going from 13 percent favorable, 43 percent unfavorable last month to 29 percent favorable, 33 percent unfavorable now.

Those aren’t blockbuster ratings for either party, but with a group of voters that often considers all its options unpalatable, it’s at least a sign that Democrats can again compete to be the least-bad option for independents.

“Just because I don’t think Obama will ever be very popular with independents doesn’t mean I don’t think he’ll win them in the 2012 election. Independents end up making a lot of ‘lesser of two evils’ calculations when it comes to voting,” Jensen said. “I think Obama’s slightly unpopular with independents at mid-40s approval but that he can still win a majority of their votes next year if the GOP doesn’t come up with a better candidate.”

Winston emphasized that even in some of the polls that show Obama doing better with independents, many of those voters still disapprove of his handling of the economy - the issue most strategists believe will decide the 2012 election.

“He has not put back together his majority coalition, by any stretch,” Winston said, adding that Obama’s address to Congress on Tuesday might be a good indicator of whether he can sustain his gains.

“I think the State of the Union is a very big speech for President Obama, because basically what we’re going to see in that speech I where he thinks he can go with his policies, given that last election.”

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story overstated the number of Senate seats that Democrats lost in November. The total was six.

CORRECTION: Corrected by: David Cohen @ 01/23/2011 08:04 PM CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story overstated the number of Senate seats that Democrats lost in November. The total was six.