If Republicans do hold the house and Senate tomorrow part of the reason will be attributed to President George Bush’s last minute campaigning — but a new poll shows seeing Bush on the stump hasn’t been endearing to many Americans:
President Bush’s popularity has dipped to 35 percent, according to a new CNN poll, with 41 percent of likely voters saying their disapproval of his performance will affect their vote in Tuesday’s elections for control of Congress.
Sixty-one percent of the 1,008 adult Americans who responded to the Opinion Research Corp. poll said they disapproved of the way Bush is handling his job as president, according to the survey. The poll was conducted by telephone Friday through Sunday.
This finding represents a two-point decline in Bush’s approval rating compared with a CNN poll conducted a week earlier. The decline is within the poll’s sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. The new approval rating is four points lower than a survey taken two weeks ago.
In the latest poll, 41 percent of likely voters said they would be sending a message about their disapproval of Bush when they vote Tuesday. Another 42 percent said their opinion of Bush is not a factor in their congressional voting, while 16 percent said they would be sending a vote of support for Bush when they cast ballots Tuesday.
These are very weak numbers for President during a mid-term election who wants to maintain his Congressional numbers. Many of the polls have had contradictory specifics — but this is one aspect that needs to be factored in for those who want to try and guess how the vote will go Tuesday.
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.