President Bush’s approval ratings continue to drop to new lows with almost every new poll. In August, a survey from CBS News found 45 percent of Americans approving of the President, a number that dropped to 41 percent last month. Now, as CBS News reports, the President’s numbers have dropped even further.
69 percent of Americans say things in the U.S. are pretty seriously off on the wrong track — the highest number since CBS News started asking the question in 1983. Today, just 26 percent say things are going in the right direction.
Majorities of the public have consistently said the U.S. is off on the wrong track since January 2004. In May 2004, shortly after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal came to light, 65 percent were negative. In November 1994, just as Republicans took control of both houses of Congress for the first time in decades, [65] percent of Americans said the country was off on the wrong track.
President Bush’s job approval rating has fallen to his lowest rating ever. 37 percent now approve of the job he is doing as president, while 58 percent disapprove. Those in his own party are still overwhelmingly positive about his performance (nearly 80 percent approve), but the president receives little support from either Democrats or Independents. And while views of President Bush have lately not changed much among Republicans or Democrats, his approval rating among Independents has dropped 11 points since just last month, from 40 percent to 29 percent now.
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43 percent of Americans have a favorable view of the Democrats in Congress, and 46% have an unfavorable opinion of them. Views of the Republicans in Congress are a bit more negative; 37 percent have a favorable opinion, while more than half, 53 percent, have an unfavorable view. [emphasis added]
So much for my earlier prediction that we should look out “for a temporary bounce in the polls in coming weeks from the nomination of Harriet Miers.”
[Update 1:35 PM Pacific]: The latest polling from AP-Ipsos shows almost the exact same results — President Bush with 39 percent approval. More worrisome for the President and the Republican Party, however, is the fact that much of the drain is coming from Republican women, Evangelicals, and Southerners.
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