Yet another new poll shows President George Bush’s poll numbers going down — although one commentator warns that it may not necessarily be a “new low.”
The new poll is from CNN and it seemingly shows Bush’s new numbers down lower than ever:
President Bush’s approval ratings have sunk to a personal low, with only a third of Americans saying they approve of the way he is handling his job, a national poll released Monday said.
In the telephone poll of 1,012 adult Americans carried out Friday through Sunday by Opinion Research Corporation for CNN, 32 percent of respondents said they approve of Bush’s performance, 60 percent said they disapprove and 8 percent said they do not know.
That’s a significant drop from the way Americans perceived the president a year ago. In a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll carried out April 29-May 1, 2005, Americans were split on their assessments of Bush’s performance, with 48 percent saying they approved and 49 percent saying they disapproved.
Note that a different company is taking this poll (see below).
CNN’s poll has a sampling error of plus-or-minus 3 percentage points for most questions.
It was one of four conducted within the past 10 days that have yielded similar results: a Pew Center poll carried out April 7-16 gave Bush a 35 percent approval rating; a Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll carried out last Tuesday and Wednesday gave him a 33 percent approval rating; and an American Research Group poll carried out Tuesday through Friday gave him a 34 percent approval rating.
So this poll is part of a TREND — which means reservations could be raised about it (again, see below) but it’s not as if its a poll that is at variance with what other polls are showing. What are the polls showing? An erosion of support for GWB which comes partly from him losing the support of some Republicans. And one of the most notable factors in recent months is the near desertion en masse of independent voters (some of whom gave Bush the benefit of the doubt on election day in 2000 and 2004). MORE:
Asked whether the term “strong and decisive leader” describes Bush, 46 percent said yes, down from 62 percent who said they felt that way in a CNN/USA Today/Gallup survey carried out July 22-24, 2005.
Asked whether “honest and trustworthy” describes the president, 40 percent said yes, down from 56 percent in a survey carried out April 1-2 last year.
Americans were evenly split on whether Bush is “competent,” with 47 percent saying yes, 47 percent saying no and 6 percent expressing no opinion.
So one of the biggest shifts is in Bush’s image — in how many Americans perceive his character…one of the points on which he ran in 2000 and that seemingly benefited him in 2004 as well.
And then there’s this, which isn’t too surprising:
Dissatisfaction with their leader appears to parallel Americans’ unhappiness over gas prices.
Blogger Mystery Pollster (who writes excellent analyses on polls) has a cautionary note on this poll. Here’s part of it:
But wait, despite yet another “new low” story (or perhaps because of it), MP readers may be less interested in the results of the survey than organization that conducted it: The Opinion Research Corporation (ORC). Remember that CNN recently severed its long-time survey partnership with the Gallup Organization and USAToday. Could ORC be the new partner and Gallup’s replacement? It sure looks that way….
….A warning to MP readers: Be careful of making too much of the “new low” comparisons to other recent surveys, particularly the most recent surveys conducted by Gallup and the now defunct CNN/USAToday/Gallup partnership. CNN is still the sponsor, and while the wording may be the same, the pollster and calling centers are different. As we have discussed previously…different polls can have different house effects that make for slightly but consistently different results.
True. However, what we’re seeing is a trend. We’ve added the Rasmussen Poll website to our blogroll under OTHER VOICES. CLICK HERE and you can see that Bush’s poll numbers went down, then went up, and now seem to be going slightly down again.
Polls are like a see-saw. Up/see and down/saw.
Right now Bush is having more “saw” than “see” — and the scrambling within his administration and the spate of stories about worried Republicans suggest everyone definitely sees a downward trend.
BUT THAT’S JUST OUR VIEW ON POLLS. OTHERS SEE THIS POLL IN VARYING WAYS. HERE’S A CROSS-SECTION:
—Common Sense Junction: “Bush’s Approval Ratings In Toilet…and well deserved.”
—The Unknown Candidate on the poll numbers: “Pretty darned low…and dropping faster than Cheney’s hunting partners or Bush’s I.Q.”
—Battlepanda: “Seems to me there’s a real opportunity for Democrats in the US and Liberals or NDP here in Canada. As gas prices climb, people will demand that the government do something. Now, I haven’t seen a price cap that I thought would actually help matters, but that’s not to say some restrictions on demand might not work, especially if they were coupled with major investments in mass transit. Expect some proposal like this to be made, and to be immediately attacked as the next worst thing since the Gulag Archipelago.”
The pundits keep waiting for signs the Bush WH is ‘turning things around’, but they haven’t had a good week since the 2004 election. And, guess what? They’re not going to have one. The wheels haven’t just fallen off, the motor’s lying in pieces in the road, like an old Max Fleisher cartoon. If it’s not Abramoff, it’s Iraq and if not that, Plame and Libby. Or gas prices. Or the phone fixing scandal in NH (Mehlman to testify?) Or all of the above. That’s what happens when you’re not very good at governing, and the press reports the facts about how you campaign. I’m sure replacing Scott McClellan will fix all of that. Not.
So, I’m going to go out on a limb and predict $3.75 gasoline by 4th of July, and Bush breaks the 30% mark in approvals at the same time. Heck, he could go down to 27% by then, but I’m betting that each percentage point down is going to be the hardcore kool-aid drinkers, and they’re going to have to see their Hummers thirsting in the desert before they budge.
–The Democratic Daily Blog notes the trend. And someone in comments writes: “He is only 3 points from Nixon’s approval rating when he resigned. It is only a matter of time before he hits the magic number.”
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.