President Obama has experience a slow but steady decline in his polling numbers since the day he was sworn into office. This is to be expected, it’s kind of like those “you start dying the day your born” sort of thing.

Our friends at Gallup say never fear, this is natural in a presidency. In a new study the Obama’s numbers look strikingly similar to the trends of two other presidents; Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.

The study examined polling data for every president since Eisenhower and tracked trends in their first 20 months in office.

Thanks to TPM

Thanks to TPM

All three presidents started off strong but suffered declining poll numbers culminating in big mid-term losses. Obviously President Obama is his own man, but despite a rough two years it history shows us this is only the beginning.

Not that the Presidency is just like high-school, but we would say Obama is coming out of his freshman year. Who was cool in their freshmen year? In this analogy sluggish economy = braces face.

With a new GOP majority in the House, Obama is definitely entering a new phase of his presidency. Where it will go from here is very difficult to predict.