By NBC’s Domenico Montanaro, Political Reporter, NBC News
President Obama’s base has abandoned him – so goes the conventional Beltway wisdom.
The problem with this accepted narrative: There’s no data to back this up, according to the most recent NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll.
The survey, which was conducted in late August, was abysmal for the president, save for his head-to-head match ups with GOP presidential contenders. But it also included these numbers:
— By an 81 percent-14 percent margin, Democrats approved of his job performance, essentially unchanged from his 82 percent-14 percent score in July.
— Among liberals, it was 74 percent-21 percent — exactly the same numbers from July.
— What about African Americans? Over the past month, Rep. Maxine Waters and other members of the Congressional Black Caucus – in addition to outspoken Princeton’s Cornell West and talk-show host Tavis Smiley — have criticized the president for not focusing on African-American unemployment. Despite apparent outrage at the president at one of the CBC’s town halls in Detroit, which was replayed for multiple days on cable, 92 percent of black respondents said they approved of Obama’s job with 5 percent disapproving. That’s actually up from July, when his approval with the group stood at 83%-13%.
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