A fifth of those who approve of Obama also approve of dismantling what he did

There is probably a legion of political science research that digs into what people think they mean when they say they approve of an elected official's job performance. Clearly there's some overlap with how they generally feel about that person and about how they're doing in their own lives; clearly, too, it's often based on a general sense of what the elected official did as opposed to particular accomplishments.

Why do I say that? I say that because about 10 percent of those surveyed in a new USA Today-Suffolk University poll hold these two positions:

(1) They approve of the job Barack Obama is doing as president; and (2) They think it would be a good thing if the work Obama did as president were "significantly dismantle[d]" by Donald Trump.

It's maybe a weird end-point of the idea that Everything the Government Does Is Bad. There's this continuous split between how people feel about Congress (boooo) and how they feel about their own congressmen (yayyy) that may be what we're seeing here: Obama's great! But he did some government, and we can't have that.

Overall, 20 percent of those who approve of Obama's job performance think it would be good to dismantle his legacy. Ten percent of those who view him unfavorably think it would be bad to undo the work he did. I don't know.

But let's try to figure out who these Obama-loving/Obama's-work-hating people are, hmm? Let's marvel at some numbers here.

Like that those who say they trust Fox News above all other sources - a quarter of respondents - are far more likely to disapprove of Obama and want to dismantle his legacy. I'm not saying this is surprising, I'm just saying that this is a pretty stark overlap with membership in the Republican Party. (A majority of Republicans listed Fox as their most trusted source of news and commentary.)

Or that those who dislike both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are more likely to approve of Obama than the population on the whole. Obamaites, dissatisfied with the choices at hand in the 2016 election.

Now, let's turn our attention to the gray box near "Clinton voters." The gray box highlights overlap where approval of Obama and approving of undoing Obama's work overlap. There's some margin of error at play, but 11 percent of those who voted for Clinton fit into the yes-to-Obama's-work-and-no-to-preserving-Obama's-work sphere. So do 10 percent of Democrats. This is a subset of a subset of the overall population, but it's part of that overall 10 percent.

Meanwhile, 16 percent of those who voted for Trump said that they approve of Barack Obama. That's almost certainly another part of the equation, given that voting for Trump was pretty explicitly a vote to undercut what Obama had done. (No group was more likely to say it was good to dismantle Obama's legacy than Trump voters - except for those who trust Fox.)

A combination then? People who like Obama personally but voted for Trump and Democrats who like Obama but are willing to start anew? It's hard to say.

It's very fitting for 2016, of course. You're on the Internet right now, so you're familiar with the "this is fine" dog, I assume. A little dog in a hat, sitting in a burning house, sipping coffee and saying, "this is fine." Extending that analogy here, I suppose the dog's delicious coffee is Barack Obama, and the house the dog is sitting in is the only place in the world that makes delicious Barack Obama coffee. The 10 percent of people being discussed here are the dog in the hat.

The survey data are not as complete as they could be. Two people who replied to the survey - white men ages 35 to 49 who identify as independents - said they'd never heard of this "Barack Obama" character. Either Suffolk was surveying people in the recovery ward of a trauma center that specializes in comas or these dudes were lying.

How they felt about dismantling the work this anonymous Berrock Obimo (sp?) did is not recorded.