Day: August 10, 2010

Majority of Liberals Still Like Obama

Buck Banks

In a preview to a survey that will be released this week, Public Policy Polling’s Tom Jensen apologizes for writing a “liberals like Obama” every couple of months, but notes that there always seems to be a need to remind people that the president’s support on the left remains strong:

On the national poll we’ll release this week 85 percent of liberals approve of the job Obama is doing to 12 percent disapproving; 88 percent support his health care plan looking back with only 7 percent opposed.

Not only are those numbers good, but they’re steady. Obama’s favor with liberals hasn’t been on the decline. In May his approval with liberals was 87/10. In February it was 81/15. In November it was 87/4. Even as his ratings have declined overall he’s stayed in that sort of mid-80s range with liberal voters.

The volume of the voices of liberals who don’t like Obama is much greater than the volume of their numbers, which probably means Robert Gibbs shouldn’t let the select few get him so irritated.

Verbatim

Buck Banks

It doesn’t matter what I do. People need to hear what I have to say. There’s no one else who can say what I can say. It doesn’t matter what I live.

— Newt Gingrich, quoted in an Esquire profile, on the hypocrisy of his extramarital affairs and his family-values rhetoric.

FoxNews.com Is Dead Last Among News Websites

Jon Ponder

screencap-foxnews.comMediaWeek:

Foxnews.com averages around 12 million or 13 million monthly unique users, according to Nielsen Online, rarely approaching the 35 million to 40 million uniques that leaders Yahoo News, MSNBC and CNN regularly deliver in aggregate. Some of that disparity can be explained away, as both Yahoo and MSNBC draw heavy traffic from their portal counterparts, and CNN benefits from traffic driven by CNNMoney.com and Sports Illustrated’s site.

But even on its own, CNN.com consistently beats Foxnews.com by 7 million or 8 million unique users. Per comScore, the gap is even larger: 43.4 million uniques for CNN.com in June vs. 11.4 million for Foxnews.com. Plus, CNN.com regularly bests Foxnews.com in measures like page views, time spent and video streams—and it has opened an early lead in mobile (14 million uniques vs. 9 million in May for Fox, per Nielsen).

This reinforces my theory that liberal radio and television shows lag in ratings because, unlike right wingers, liberals can read. But seriously, while a lot of folks over 65 are online, it’s fair to say that they are more educated, and thus more liberal, than Fox’s audience, for which the average age was 65 in 2009.

Charlotte a Strong Contender to Host 2012 Democratic Convention

Jon Ponder

The tower in the center is the home office of Bank of America, designed by Cesar Pelli
The tower in the center is the home office of Bank of America, designed by Cesar Pelli
I am rooting for my former adopted hometown:

Four cities are officially in the running to host the 2012 Democratic National Convention. But after a recent site visit from about a dozen Democratic Party representatives, Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx likes his city’s chances. Not that he would say one negative word about St. Louis, Cleveland or Minneapolis. He would rather talk about Charlotte’s “great new facilities” and “vibrant, can-do attitude.”

“For almost an entire generation, the Democratic Party has had a hands off attitude toward the South,” Foxx told me on Friday. Though it was barely 8 a.m., we watched as workers in a city that keeps bankers’ hours grabbed their coffee-to-go on the way to their offices. “The storyline is making the South a battleground,” the youthful Democratic mayor said, “coming to a state that has been significantly impacted by the economic downturn, proving its resilience every day.”