Obama Events of the Week

President Barack Obama, as is true of most presidents, has been getting around lately.

On Sunday of this week he attended church with his family in Washington at St. John's Episcopal Church. This is one of the few times he has been to church since taking office.

Gallup interviews with over 300,000 Americans in 2009 show that, as an infrequent church attender, Obama is right at home with about 45% of Americans who seldom or never attend religious services. On the other hand, 43% of Americans say they attend church weekly or almost every week.

Obama's demographic characteristics produce somewhat contradictory findings in terms of predicted church attendance. As an African American, he would be expected to be above average in church attendance; blacks have the highest attendance of any race or ethnic group in America. As a male, he would be expected to attend less frequently, given the universal gender gap in religiosity in America today. As a baby boomer (he is 49 and at the tail end of the baby boom) he would be in a middle category of church attendance, higher than those younger, but lower than those 60 and above. His education would not matter; there is little relationship between education and church attendance. Living in D.C.? That predicts slightly lower than average attendance. Obama is a Democrat, and that predicts lower than average church attendance, particularly compared to Republicans, who are much more religious on all indicators.

About 2% of Americans identify as Episcopalian, by the way. Episcopalians continue to retain the distinction of having the highest average income of any Christian religious group in America.

Obama held an hour-long television broadcast on CNBC on Monday talking about jobs. That particular topic makes a lot of sense from the people's perspective.

Our latest data show that only 10% of Americans say that now is a good time to find a quality job. Very modified good news for Obama comes from the fact that this is basically no worse than the 9% who said it was a good time in his first full month in office, February 2009. But, as recently as February 2007, we had 45% saying it was a good time to find quality job. The all-time low on this is 8%, measured in November 2009 -- not much different than where it is today.

Meanwhile, as Obama was talking about the economy, the National Bureau of Economic Research announced that the recession was over and has been over since the summer of 2009. That's nice to know. However, only 16% of Americans agree. Plus, Americans continue to say that the economy and jobs are the most important problems facing the country. By far.

After his CNBC speech on Monday, President Obama headed for the Keystone State (Pennsylvania) and campaigned for Joe Sestak, a former Navy admiral running for the Senate. Obama exhorted the Democrats in the audience to get out and vote. This type of motivational speech is much needed by Democrats, who are running 19 percentage points below Republicans in terms of saying they are "very" enthusiastic about voting this year. Democrats are also way behind on our measure of "thought" given to the election.

Thursday, Obama speaks to the United Nations in New York City. Thirty-one percent of Americans said that the United Nations is doing a good job in our latest update in February of this year. That's down from the high point (since 1954) of 58% measured in February 2002 in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist bombings and the U.S. incursion into Afghanistan.