What I'd like to know when I look at Obama disapproval is; among those who disapprove of his performance, what percentage disapproves because he's not been successful in their view at bringing about full-on radical Leftist Socialism, and hasn't been successful at "kicking our asses" in the manner in which they believe our asses need to be kicked.
Based on the 2010 election, there are presumably a good number of people who voted for hopenchange who now see it as folly. They would be people who've turned against Obama because of his radical Leftism. But there are others who've turned against him because they believe he has not gone far enough in forcing his agenda. That would seemingly be a distinct minority right now, but it still skews the disapproval numbers. For electoral purposes, that's all one needs to know. But for getting a general sense of where the electorate stands ideologically, it's not as helpful. As we saw in Wisconsin, and in the closeness of individual races last November (the overall blowout notwithstanding), despite everything Obama has done - ideologically speaking, we are a people roughly divided 50-50%. If Obama were to be more successful and decisive at implementing radical Leftist policy, I suspect we might see those approval numbers swing back toward the middle. It's just a sense I have, not based on any ability to crunch numbers like this.