Survey Report

As public perceptions of Barack Obama have changed over the course of his presidency, so too have the words used to describe him.

The national survey by the Pew Research Center, conducted Jan. 7-11 among 1,504 adults, finds that the words good (35 mentions) and incompetent (33 mentions) are used most frequently to describe Obama. Those words also were used most often in June 2013, the last time this question was asked. This report shows the actual number of respondents mentioning each word; they are not percentages.

However, some new words have emerged in the descriptions of Obama: Among the roughly half of respondents asked the question (N=746), dictator is mentioned by 12, while eight describe Obama as impressive. Neither word had been used in nine prior surveys asking for one-word descriptions of Obama since he became president.

And a perennial critique of Obama – socialist – is not as prominent on the list of descriptions as in the past; in the new survey, five respondents describe Obama as a socialist. In April 2009, when Obama was generally described in positive terms (and his job approval was much higher than it is today), socialist stood out among the negatives.

Still, many of the descriptions of Obama are the same as those used in the past. Some supporters continue to point to his intelligence (21 mentions; another nine call him smart), while opponents describe him as an idiot or stupid (12). Nearly equal numbers call him honest (12) and a liar (11).

In February 2007, at a comparable point in his presidency, incompetent, arrogant and honest were frequently used descriptions of George W. Bush. Bush’s approval rating was lower than Obama’s (33% for Bush then, 47% for Obama today) and negative terms were used more frequently to describe him.

As Obama prepares to deliver his sixth State of the Union, 24% say his speech will be more important than past addresses, while 19% say it will be less important; 52% say it is about as important as previous State of the Unions.

Fewer view tonight’s speech as more important than said that before Obama’s State of the Union speeches in 2013 (32%) and 2012 (36%). And in January 2010, 39% viewed Obama’s State of the Union as more important than previous speeches.

As in past years, there are substantial partisan differences in opinions about the importance of Obama’s State of the Union address. Nearly four-in-ten Democrats (37%) say this year’s speech will be more important than those of previous years, compared with 20% of independents and just 13% of Republicans. By contrast, Republicans (32%) are far more likely than independents (22%) or Democrats (7%) to view Obama’s speech as less important.

The analysis in this report is based on telephone interviews conducted January 7-11, 2015 among a national sample of 1,504 adults, 18 years of age or older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia (528 respondents were interviewed on a landline telephone, and 976 were interviewed on a cell phone, including 563 who had no landline telephone). The survey was conducted by interviewers at Princeton Data Source under the direction of Princeton Survey Research Associates International. A combination of landline and cell phone random digit dial samples were used; both samples were provided by Survey Sampling International. Interviews were conducted in English and Spanish. Respondents in the landline sample were selected by randomly asking for the youngest adult male or female who is now at home. Interviews in the cell sample were conducted with the person who answered the phone, if that person was an adult 18 years of age or older. For detailed information about our survey methodology, see http://pewresearch.org/pewresearch-org/politics/methodology/

The combined landline and cell phone sample are weighted using an iterative technique that matches gender, age, education, race, Hispanic origin and nativity and region to parameters from the 2013 Census Bureau’s American Community Survey and population density to parameters from the Decennial Census. The sample also is weighted to match current patterns of telephone status (landline only, cell phone only, or both landline and cell phone), based on extrapolations from the 2014 National Health Interview Survey. The weighting procedure also accounts for the fact that respondents with both landline and cell phones have a greater probability of being included in the combined sample and adjusts for household size among respondents with a landline phone. Sampling errors and statistical tests of significance take into account the effect of weighting.

The following table shows the unweighted sample sizes and the error attributable to sampling that would be expected at the 95% level of confidence for different groups in the survey:

Sample sizes and sampling errors for other subgroups are available upon request.

In addition to sampling error, one should bear in mind that question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of opinion polls.