Every time a new poll is released, we feel a great disturbance in the force, as if a million voices cried out in terror. It has been over a decade since more Americans said the country was heading in the right direction than that it was off on the wrong track. Confidence in the military, religion, and media are plummeting. A litany of government incompetence has driven a majority of Americans to say government does too much. Approval of Congress is around 15{09f965da52dc6ab4c1643a77bd40d1f729d807040cd8db540234bb981a782222} – a number so low Senator McCain assumed it included only staff and relatives until his mother called to tell him it was only staff. Consumer confidence still has not rebounded to pre-recession levels. Americans are more ideologically divided now than at any time in recent memory. In short, things are bad, and polls show little hope that the country can turn a corner while President Obama is in office.
Meanwhile, the data journalists at FiveThirtyEight released a poll that included favorability numbers for some Star Wars characters – numbers that are definitely from a galaxy far, far away from DC. Christopher Ingraham of the Washington Post Wonkblog compared FiveThirtyEight’s Star Wars data and President Obama’s favorability ratings to a recent Gallup survey of potential 2016 contenders.
The photos below—not from the Star Wars cantina scene—compare the net favorability ratings of Star Wars characters to potential Presidential players.