Obama’s approval rating plummets after Gates row

President Barack Obama's intervention after the black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr was arrested by Cambridge, Massachusetts police sergeant Joseph Crowley has caused him to lose support among white voters. Two days after he said the police has "acted stupidly" - a position he then tried to row back from by apologising and inviting both men to the White House for last week's infamous 'beer summit' - a poll found his support among white voters had fallen from 53 per cent to 46 per cent.

The Pew Research Center poll showed that 79 per cent of respondents said they had heard "a lot" or "something" about the President's intervention. Significantly more (41 per cent) disapproved than approved (29 per cent) of the way the President had handled the incident.
 
As to who was most to blame for the incident when Gates (above right) lost his cool with Crowley after neighbours reported him forcing the door of his own home, a NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll showed 27 per cent thought Gates was more at fault, while 11 per cent said Crowley was.
 
On Sunday the professor said that although he is able to joke about his arrest, he has also received death threats and bomb threats. Speaking publicly for the first time since the incident, Gates told an audience at the Martha's Vineyard Book Festival that Crowley had seemed very relieved to shake his hand at the White House. "I offered to get his kids into Harvard if he doesn’t arrest me again," he joked.

Gates was promoting his book In Search of Our Roots: How 19 Extraordinary African Americans Reclaimed Their Past. He said he had received numerous threats since the incident, including an email that read: "You should die, you're a racist". The professor has since changed his email address and mobile phone number and is also considering moving home. ·