Hawaii warm for Obama, Wyoming cold

by Mark Silva

If President Barack Obama finds a warmer reception in some places than others, there are some states where the president is more popular.

Hawaii appears the warmest.

Wyoming the coldest.

At least that was the conclusion, at the end of the year, of a lot of daily tracking by the Gallup Poll.

The president's average approval rating in 2009 ran highest in his native state of Hawaii - 70.8 percent - and lowest in that big western state gone red, Wyoming, 41.6 percent.

With an approval rating that averaged 57.6 percent nationally last year - and is hovering just below 50 percent lately in most reputable polls lately - there were 10 states where the president's approval rating ran well above 60 in all of the polling that the Gallup Poll did in its first year of tracking a president's approval ratings every day:

In Hawaii, Maryland, Vermont, New York, Massaschusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island and California. In the former senator's home state of Illinois, his approval averaged 65.2 percent.

And there were 10 states where his approval ran at 50 percent or lower: Wyoming, Idaho, West Virginia, Alaska, Utah, Oklahoman, Montana, Alabama, Arkansas and Louisiana.

Hawaii, remember, also delivered the highest share of the vote for Obama, a native of Honolulu who played high school basketball there, in the presidential election of 2008. The District of Columbia is another place where an even higher vote for Obama was recorded, and his approval remained high there as well.

And the states where the president's approval rating ran strongest in the Gallup polling also, as Gallup's Lydia Saad notes today, are "all solidly blue in the party identification of their residents.''

And all of the states where the president's approval ran at 50 or lower last year are states that voted for Republican Sen. John McCain in 2009.

So where are we, one year in?

About as divided as we were from the start.

See the full run of the states in a report on the polling of more than 150,000 people nationwide with results carrying a margin of error of about 3 percent in most places and as low as 1 percent in the biggest states, at Gallup.