President Obama's approval rating in the state has taken a dip. Va. poll: Sequester hits Obama

President Barack Obama’s approval rating in Virginia has slipped below 50 percent for the first time since his reelection as $85 billion in budget cuts affect the state’s economy, which is powered by federal and military spending, according to a new poll on Thursday.

Forty-five percent of Virginia voters approve of Obama’s job performance, and 49 percent disapprove, the Quinnipiac University poll found. In Feburary, Obama’s approval rating stood at 51 percent, with 46 percent of voters disapproving.


“We’ll watch to see if President Barack Obama’s job approval drop is a temporary blip or the beginning of something larger,” said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

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“One thing that may be hurting the president’s approval rating is the implementation of automatic cuts in the federal budget from the sequester,” he added. “Virginia voters are very unhappy about it taking effect. And some of that unhappiness may be rubbing off on the president.”

The spending cuts are less popular in Virginia than they are nationally. In the Old Dominion, half of all voters said the cuts were a “bad thing for the country” and 24 percent disagreed. Forty percent of Virginians said the cuts were bad for them personally, while 18 percent disagreed.

Nationally, only 41 percent of voters believe the sequester will be bad for the country, according to a CBS News poll released earlier this week. Twenty-eight percent think it will be a good thing

Virginia is the home of the Pentagon, as well as numerous other military installations and domestic agencies. Half of the cuts in sequestration hit defense spending, resulting in extensive furloughs for all civilian Defense Department employees and costing them about 20 percent of their salary.

The poll of 1,098 registered voters was conducted from March 20 to March 25. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

This article tagged under: Sequestration

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