posted
President Bush just had his worst poll ever , a Newsweek poll with a 33% approval rating. The poll was bad for Bush and Republicans across the board. Another Newsweek poll first:
quote: For the first time in the Newsweek Poll, a majority of Americans -- 58 percent -- believe that the Bush administration purposely misled the public about evidence that Iraq had banned weapons in order to build support for the war. Thirty-six percent say it did not. In general, 66 percent of Americans say that the Iraq war has not made Americans safer from terrorism; 29 percent say that it has. A 58-percent majority also say they are not too confident or not at all confident that the United States will successfully establish a stable democratic form of government in Iraq over the long term.
Other recent Bush polls from newest to oldest: Poll.......app dispp % Newsweek ..33 59
Time...........36 57
AP-Ipsos....38 59
Pew...........37 53
NBC/WSJ RV....39 56
CNN..........39 59
FOX/.........42 54 Opinion Dynamics LV
Note: The Fox is poll is the oldest (9/26-27), before the Foley scandal. The LV means likely voters in the Fox poll, RV means registered voters in the NBC poll.
posted
I think they have to take into account the fact that different districts poll differently. I'm sure there must be places in this country where Bush's approval rating is still strong. Also, they must remember that disapproval of the president may not necessarily translate into approval of the Democratic party, or even disapporval of the Republican party.
code:
Clinton 36 5/26-27/93 Newsweek
... what did Clinton do in his first four months of office that left him with an approval rating of 36% ? He'd just won an election!
--j_k
[ October 08, 2006, 11:15 PM: Message edited by: James Tiberius Kirk ]
Posts: 3617 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
Maybe a better comparison would be to show the polling data on two term presidents during their second midterm elections.
There are predictable ebbs and flows in presidential terms, and showing random dates in all their presidencies doesn't seem fair, even more so because events in history also effect the polls. It almost makes a comparison impossible, but I think doing it by date would be the easiest way.
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posted
I'm pretty sure Bush hit a low of 29% a few months back. I would say that I just have a bad memory, but another forum I frequent never lets go of that, so I doubt it.
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I thought he was on the rebound. What, did the Foley scandal flatten that, or was it related to continued international woes?
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What has he done in the last couple months, or what has gone well for him other than a drop in gas prices that would cause his numbers to rebound?
Especially, what would offset increasing disapproval of the war or the mounting list of problems befalling the Republican Party?
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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1) Record high Stock Market and other signs of am improving enconomy.
2) North Korean nuclear test shows we need strong man leading our country.
3) Lower gas prices relieve pressure on lower and middle class.
4) Weak hurricane season takes spotlight off of his lack of a plan on Global Warming and other environmental issues.
5) Peace holds in Beirut, takes the spotlight off of his lack of a plan for the Isreali/Palestine issue. (perhaps not lack of a plan, but lack of progress on his plan).
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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quote:-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- What has gone well for President Bush?
1) Record high Stock Market and other signs of am improving enconomy.
2) North Korean nuclear test shows we need strong man leading our country.
3) Lower gas prices relieve pressure on lower and middle class.
4) Weak hurricane season takes spotlight off of his lack of a plan on Global Warming and other environmental issues.
5) Peace holds in Beirut, takes the spotlight off of his lack of a plan for the Isreali/Palestine issue. (perhaps not lack of a plan, but lack of progress on his plan).
While I can see 1,3,4 and 5 I think you're pushing it with including 2 as something that's gone right. #2 could just as easily/accurately say "North Korean nuclear test shows we need a strong leader who won't stand by on the sidelines and wring his hands while a dangerous nation gets the bomb leading our country" or some such.
I really don't see how Bush being asleep at the wheel and letting NK get a nuke shows he's a strong leader...
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: On the rebound with what?
What has he done in the last couple months, or what has gone well for him other than a drop in gas prices that would cause his numbers to rebound?
Especially, what would offset increasing disapproval of the war or the mounting list of problems befalling the Republican Party?
Not necessarily with what, but they were on the rebound. After hitting his actual low of 29%, he climbed back to the low 40s, until more recently.
Posts: 143 | Registered: Sep 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Dan_raven: What has gone well for President Bush?
1) Record high Stock Market and other signs of am improving enconomy.
2) North Korean nuclear test shows we need strong man leading our country.
3) Lower gas prices relieve pressure on lower and middle class.
4) Weak hurricane season takes spotlight off of his lack of a plan on Global Warming and other environmental issues.
5) Peace holds in Beirut, takes the spotlight off of his lack of a plan for the Isreali/Palestine issue. (perhaps not lack of a plan, but lack of progress on his plan).
I already agreed with you on 3, but 2, 4 and 5 don't help him at all. Most of America has already forgotten about Lebanon, and it isn't like Bush did a whole lot to solve that problem to begin with. 2 hurts him because strong man or not, thanks to the mess he has us in currently, which a majority of the country agrees is a mess, we're in a weaker position to deal with N. Korea, and Bush's Korean policies have been a disaster.
4 doesn't help him because it isn't a positive, it's an absence of negative, which isn't the same thing. It's the difference between adding +1 or subtracting -1, or doing nothing. Hurricanes are negative numbers because of Katrina memories, and his likely bungling of followups, but no hurricanes have no effect, not a positive one.
1 I give you, but I don't know if the average voter takes a look at the stock market every day. But the others are either bad in themselves, or have no effect at all. I was always told in my polisci classes that the best time for a president to put forth new ideas was the first two years of his second term. After that, he's dead in the water. Well, as of a month from now he's dead in the water.
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posted
I agree that most of these are pathetic because they are things that did not go wrong, instead of things that went right.
Still they helped improve his rating because they silenced the negative that was already going on.
In other words, The Presidents ratings are at X.
The war in Lebanon goes on and he appears inneffective. We get x-1 which equates to a lower poll number. When the war is over and our focus is away from it, the -1 goes away.
Similarly there was a lot of talk early this summer about how bad the Hurricane season would be, how another Katrina was inevitable, and how FEMA was unprepared, and big oil was the cause of the global warming that caused the hurricanes. X-1. When those storms didn't materialize, the -1 went away and his numbers recovered.
Its not like I list "We didn't sell the Washington Monument to Al Queda". Obviously that would be a big -10000 to the presidents poll numbers. However, nobody was expecting that to happen so it wasn't already dragging down his numbers.
In defence of number 2--NK and the Bomb. This news could have gone either way. It could have been seen as either a need for a tough pres, and President Bush has been tough on NK, or it could have been seen as further impotence on behalf of President Bush and the US. I believe that since many are leaning to view President Bush and the US as impotent in world action being all tied up in Iraq, that is how it fell out. But for the first few days, when it may have given President Bush a slight bump.
or not.
If I could predict these well, politicians would be flocking to my door.
Thank goodness I have "Raid's Politician Be-Gone No Pest Strips" in case that ever happens.
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: I was always told in my polisci classes that the best time for a president to put forth new ideas was the first two years of his second term. After that, he's dead in the water. Well, as of a month from now he's dead in the water.
It's sad, because I thought there was some potential to the Social Security and immigration reform ideas that he floated. Unfortunately the parties were unwilling to work together or work at all on these two issues and they are kind of dead in the water. He also had some good points to make about energy, but didn't every follow through with a solid plan or much political backing.
I wish we wouldn't define our nation by the actions of others (Iraq, North Korea, Israel, Lebanon, Iran, etc) when there's so many things that we could be focusing on here at home. Certainly the Republican party is to blame for much of that, since they seem to want to play up the national security angle (whatever for is beyond me). I can't help but wonder if there's also some Democratic resistance to the allowing a Republican president and Congress to be the ones to successfully overhaul Social Security, immigration, and set a responsible energy policy.
My personal approval ratings for nearly all politicians continue to slide to record lows Posts: 1412 | Registered: Oct 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Dan_raven: I agree that most of these are pathetic because they are things that did not go wrong, instead of things that went right.
Still they helped improve his rating because they silenced the negative that was already going on.
In other words, The Presidents ratings are at X.
The war in Lebanon goes on and he appears inneffective. We get x-1 which equates to a lower poll number. When the war is over and our focus is away from it, the -1 goes away.
Similarly there was a lot of talk early this summer about how bad the Hurricane season would be, how another Katrina was inevitable, and how FEMA was unprepared, and big oil was the cause of the global warming that caused the hurricanes. X-1. When those storms didn't materialize, the -1 went away and his numbers recovered.
Its not like I list "We didn't sell the Washington Monument to Al Queda". Obviously that would be a big -10000 to the presidents poll numbers. However, nobody was expecting that to happen so it wasn't already dragging down his numbers.
In defence of number 2--NK and the Bomb. This news could have gone either way. It could have been seen as either a need for a tough pres, and President Bush has been tough on NK, or it could have been seen as further impotence on behalf of President Bush and the US. I believe that since many are leaning to view President Bush and the US as impotent in world action being all tied up in Iraq, that is how it fell out. But for the first few days, when it may have given President Bush a slight bump.
I really think it's impossible to say. The problem is that the X-1 from Hurricanes and Lebanon are still in the minds of the people. They don't blame Bush for them happening, they blame him for his response. Lack of an opportunity to rectify his actions by doing better the next time doesn't erase the original offense.
"Bush messed up that whole Katrina affair last year, but the weather was fairly nice in 2006, good job Bush! You're back to X."
That isn't logical. X-1 remains, because the second event never happened, and he never had a chance to have X+1. The original X-1 never went away, it's still on the minds of the voters, and it still weighs on his approval ratings for many, most likely in the south, but still there. Same story in Lebanon. He never really fixed the problem, and just because there is a fragile peace there now, made by the hands of others, and steadied by them as well, doesn't mean his X-1 offense from before is erased.
I think our disagreement is that I think offenses are remembered and don't disappear necessarily when the situation fails to occur again, or even when it is rectified (yet so much of this really depends on the situation, there's no one rule for all of this). I think you think that when the president messes up, but the problem goes away, that his mess up goes away too. I don't think that's how American politics works, and I'm not sure it should. He still made the original mistake, and that should be remembered.
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posted
True, but the DOW is a very widely recognized sign of economic growth. When the DOW rises, people feel good about the economy, and generally the president gets credit for it. It doesn't matter why it is rising, and it doesn't matter what the rise in the market means, people automatically assume it's a good sign.
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posted
Samb and Lyhr are both correct. All this "good news" is easilly countered by a little thinking. However, nobody has ever accused the American Public of thinking None of this is uncontested good news for President Bush. None of it is currently up in the news driving the attention of the American public.
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posted
It's true -- you have to go digging in the macroeconomic gunk to see ugliness behind the gratifying and immediate-short-term sentiment that "the numbers on that chart today are higher than the numbers yesterday." For most people, there's only a latent comprehension of 'rising numbers,' regardless of the market undercurrents.
For the most part, I believe today's ugliness is a flat auto and real estate market. Real estate (and the negative equity related to that flat-ness) is especially important, given that something like 90% of loan finances are mortgage related. Goldman Sachs just went into bear mode over the issue, I believe.
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posted
President Bush has dropped to 28% approval, the same number President Carter had during the Iranian hostage crisis.
quote: By Marcus Mabry Newsweek May 5, 2007 - It’s hard to say which is worse news for Republicans: that George W. Bush now has the worst approval rating of an American president in a generation, or that he seems to be dragging every ’08 Republican presidential candidate down with him. But According to the new NEWSWEEK Poll, the public’s approval of Bush has sunk to 28 percent, an all-time low for this president in our poll, and a point lower than Gallup recorded for his father at Bush Sr.’s nadir. The last president to be this unpopular was Jimmy Carter who also scored a 28 percent approval in 1979.
posted
I think you'll start to see a lot more clean breaks between Republicans, especially those running for President, and Bush.
It's a tricky problem. By all accounts, Republicans are going to lose even more senate and House seats come November 2007. Democrats are drowning in campaign funds, they have the high ground, Republicans are back on their heels, and the leader of their party is arguably one of the most disliked figures in America at the moment. If they hitch their cart to him, like they did when he was first elected, it's likely he'll drag them down with him, and spell even more ruin for the party. But if they break with him now, they might have a chance to look good on the issues important to Americans.
Either way, Democrats will seize on their actions. Either they are flip floppers just trying to steal votes, or they are following an inept idiot that no one likes.
Regardless, the presidential candidates are already finding a balance between bashing and supporting Bush. It's a fine line to say that Bush is mismanaging the war, but still supporting the war.
Much will be decided when the Congress and Bush stop fighting over the war funding issue, at least, if a clear winner emerges. Both sides are digging in their heels, and ultimately if Bush can't convince Congress to budge, I think it's possible many of them feel fired up enough to just let it go and will make an attempt to pin the blame entirely on Bush for being a horrible enough leader to not make a compromise with Congress for the sake of the troops. Bush does need their approval, he needs their funding, and he can't get the money for combat operations (only basic necessities) without them. I think if they keep sending him funding bills he doesn't like and he keeps vetoing him, he's going to get even more backlash from the public.
More than in 2006 or 2004, it's the Democrats' game to lose now. Anything can happen in two years, but they are very much so on the high ground right now, and the situation can easily be manipulated to their favor.
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posted
When the coverage is relentlessly negative people tend to a negative view of the economy, even when it's doing well.
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posted
I think the national view of the economy is pretty positive, despite the flaws within, or the fact that national gas prices have just hit an all time high.
The problem is that Americans don't consider the economy to be the most important thing right now, or if they do, they recognize the damage being done to it by the Iraq War, amongst other things.
I really don't think the Media is to blame for Bush's ratings, though his utter and total lack of ability to positively play the press might have something to do with it. He used to get away with anything in front of the press, I think it's only fair now that his refusal to be forthcoming is viewed negatively, and plays negatively.
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