A Fox News poll finds that President George Bush’s “Victory Strategy” speech helped him gain some ground in his overall numbers — and suggests it brought back some wavering GOP and independent support:
President George W. Bush’s approval rating recovered a few points in the week’s FOX News poll, though slightly more Americans still disapprove than approve of his job performance. On the issue of pre-Iraq war intelligence, roughly equal numbers of Americans think the president shared the best information available as think he intentionally misled the country.
Today, 42 percent of Americans approve and 48 percent disapprove of the job President Bush is doing. Bush regained 6 percentage points from his standing earlier this month of 36 percent approval — the lowest approval of his presidency (November 8-9).
Much of this week’s improvement can be attributed to increases in approval among Republicans (+ 6 percentage points), men (+ 8 points) and independents (+10 points).
“Some of the improvement may also be due to President Bush’s Wednesday speech on Iraq,” comments Opinion Dynamics Chairman John Gorman. “Interviews finished before the speech show a 40 percent approval rate, while those done after the speech show 43 percent approval. If any of this is due to the speech it may very well be temporary.”
Indeed…BUT if you go back and look at Bush’s speeches, not every speech he has made has gotten him a bounce in the polls. So this can’t be dismissed as something that happens on all the time when GWB has made a speech.
On the other hand, there is a real question as to whether this is temporary bounce due to the speech or the beginning of a gradual upswing for Bush. An upswing would assume he’s winning back Americans who have wavered on the war and that the news out of Iraq is good — which it hasn’t been during the past 48 hours.
But the poll can’t be dismissed as meaningless, since it’s the first poll in several weeks that has shown some kind of upward movement on his approval ratings. MORE:
The long-standing polarization between the parties continues, as there are almost as many Republicans that approve of the job Bush is doing (78 percent), as there are Democrats that disapprove (80 percent). Among independents, 36 percent approve and 49 percent disapprove.
Overall, the public is sharply divided on whether before going to war President Bush knowingly gave the wrong impression about Iraq’s weapons capabilities: 46 percent think the president gave Americans the best prewar intelligence available and 44 percent think he intentionally misled the country about the presence of weapons of mass destruction.
Still a danger mark. AND:
Here again, there are predictable partisan differences: 79 percent of Republicans think Bush gave Americans the best available prewar intelligence, while 72 percent of Democrats think he misled the country. Independents split, as 45 percent think Bush misled Americans and 43 percent disagree.
What does that tell you? It underscores the erosion in Bush’s independent support and the overall polarization in the U.S. AND:
In addition, some Americans think there are still weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. A 42 percent plurality thinks Iraq had weapons before the war and moved or destroyed them, while 28 percent think there were no WMD at all. Almost one in five (19 percent) think there are still WMD in Iraq.
The current results are almost unchanged from opinions about a year and a half ago. At that time, 44 percent said the weapons were moved or destroyed, 28 percent said Iraq did not have any such weapons and 22 percent thought the weapons were still there…
The bottom line: a poll shows some movement up for Bush. It’s a new twist on the story which for weeks has been Bush’s polls going down.
The real test: what other polls will find over the next few weeks…and the impact of events and news stories beyond the administration’s control.
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.