Which Politicians Have Become More Unpopular and Popular Over The Past 6 Months?

It has been a tempestuous 2009 and so the question comes up: if you use polling as a key indicator, which politicians are now more popular and unpopular than then were six months ago?

Daniel Stone at Newsweek’s The Gaggle blog lists some of them. In a nutshell:

President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Senator Ted Kennedy are down. Stone then asks: ” But has anyone been able to cash in on Obama’s lost footing?”

He notes that Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh are down, but there are a few surprises:

John McCain would be proud to argue that, yes, some leaders are thought of better now than they were six months ago; he’s one of them. McCain’s been able to bump his approval to 58 percent from 52 back in February, reports a CNN poll, likely due to his decreased profile compared with last year. So has former Massachusetts governor and GOP candidate Mitt Romney, who’s taken a three point rise to 37 percent (according to Gallup) by taking a sideline-advocate approach to the health-care debate.

And then something a bit surprising. Even though former VP Dick Cheney has taken heat lately for the Bush administration’s interrogation policies and several other White House snafus (Plamegate, attorney firings) and has fanned the flames by publicly criticizing his successors, he’s riding higher this summer (37 percent) than he was in March (30 percent), according to a USA Today/Gallup survey.

Meanwhile, who are the biggest losers?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who Gallup reports has fallen from 42 to 32 percent this year, and former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, owner of the steepest loss: as measured by an ABC News/Washington Post poll, from 52 percent before last fall to a recently measured 40.

(You betcha..)