Just How Unpopular Is BP?

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According to a new NBC News/Journal poll, BP is one of the biggest villains that the organization has ever surveyed:

[O]nly 6 percent have a favorable rating of BP. In the history of the NBC News/Journal poll, Saddam Hussein (3 percent), Fidel Castro (3 percent) and Yasser Arafat (4 percent) have had lower favorable scores, and O.J. Simpson (11 percent) and tobacco-maker Philip Morris (15 percent) have had higher ratings.

BP execs do have a bit of breathing room: Goldman Sachs, the poster child of Wall Street greed, still ranks even lower than the oil company in the Least Popular Corporate Brands contest, as my colleague Andy points out.

That being said, the spill has pulled down Obama’s popularity as well, with his approval rating dropping five points to 45 percent–the first time it’s gone below 50 percent since the NBC News/Journal began polling. But the public still believes the president doing a better job than BP or Congress in terms of handling the spill, and Obama’s personal popularity remains high. While such trends are unlikely to help endangered Democratic members of Congress in 2010, they don’t yet spell doom for the future of Obama’s presidency.