True Blue New York Turns On Obama

Quinnipiac University poll: 49% of New York voters disapprove of President Obama. Obama's reelection team must have messed their pants when they read this poll result.

- President Obama might need to start taking a few more campaign trips to New York -- and not just to raise cash.

A stunning new survey gives the president a negative approval rating in the Empire State for the first time, with just 45 percent approval and 49 percent disapproval among voters, according to the latest Quinnipiac University poll.

That's a sharp turnaround from June, when Obama's New York popularity was a healthy 57-38.

In the 2008 presidential election, Obama carried New York with 63 percent of the vote.

The poll of 1,640 registered voters was conducted from Aug. 3-8, just after Congress approved the hard-fought debt legislation and before this week's market mayhem on Wall Street.

But according to Quinnipiac, Obama in his re-election bid next year would still take 49 percent of the vote in New York state versus a generic GOP challenger's 34 percent.

"The debt-ceiling hullabaloo devastated Obama's numbers even in true-blue New York," said Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.