Rockin’ the bottom: From National Journal’s PollTrack
The media is flush with reports about President Bush’s falling ratings, and today is no exception: A new CNN/Gallup/USA Today survey shows Bush’s job approval at 37 percent, a 4-point drop in just a few weeks and its lowest number to date.
Four other polls released this month have also put the president at new lows:
- Newsweek: 36/58 (Nov. 12)
- Fox News/Opinion Dynamics: 36/53 (Nov. 10)
- Pew Research Center: 36/55 (Nov. 8)
- ABC News/Washington Post: 38/60 (Nov. 3)
Has Bush hit bottom? Conventional wisdom suggests that eventually the president will be left with only the hardcore base of supporters who will stick with him no matter what, and his ratings won’t have any further to fall.
That makes Bush’s coattails the next logical battleground. A new Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research survey shows Democrats coming out 8 points ahead of Republicans in a generic 2006 congressional matchup. That gap has actually narrowed slightly since the previous poll, taken before Democratic gubernatorial wins in New Jersey and Virginia.
The split widened when respondents were asked about the Senate specifically: Fifty-three percent said they would choose the Democratic candidate and four in 10 said they would choose the Republican if the election were held today. (The GQR survey puts Bush’s job-approval split at 41/54, with both the approval and disapproval rating down one point from the previous poll.)
And 62 percent of a half-sample said they’d prefer the country to go in a different direction than the one Bush is headed; 35 percent said they wanted to continue in Bush’s path. The other half-sample gave Congress a similarly harsh review, with 64 percent saying they wanted it to change course and about a quarter saying they wanted it to stay on its current path.
Forty-six percent of CNN/Gallup/USA Today respondents said the country would be better off if Democrats were in charge of the legislature, and 34 percent said the same of Republicans. Those numbers are about the same as a mid-October survey that found 45 percent preferred Democrats and 32 percent preferred Republicans.
But pundits have also pointed out bright spots for the GOP. Presidents’ second-term beginnings are notoriously difficult, and Bush’s low ratings aren’t unprecedented. Other presidents — Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, according to analysis [PDF] from the Republican consultant at the George Washington Battleground Poll — have garnered similar numbers. And another number from CNN/Gallup/USA Today suggests the country is still conflicted about its president: Respondents were equally split at 49 percent when pollsters asked if he is a strong or weak president.
- Topic: News & Comment
Guys and girls, come on ! All of us Joe Six
Pack guys and Mary Pina Colada girls out here
are tired of the extremist views! Extreme
from the left, extreme from the right…please! We need common sense answers to the issues of the day which we all face. The intellectual dishonesty of so many of YOU extremists comes shining through blogs like yours. Lots of well written gobbledey-gook, but it ain’t worth a can of tuna fish!
Regards,
John M.
It’s extremists in the middle – like YOU – who run this country, and the country is badly served because of it.
Remarkable times sometimes seem unremarkable when you’re living through them. Most people are just now waking up to the fact that the Bush presidency is the worst there has ever been. The incompetence, corruption, cronyism and corporativism of this bunch is off the charts.
YOU independents – if indeed that’s what you are – were the ones who were too blind or too naive to see through him. It’s your votes that gave him the presidency.
America is weaker and more divided than it has been in more than a century because of the Bush team’s divisive politics and mismanagment.
This a great country, and it will survive this immoral, self-serving bunch. But whatever we have lost as a nation because of George Bush – the thousands of lives, the billions of dollars – is on YOUR head.
John:
I would hardly call Pensito an extremist. I would turn your argument on it’s head and say that it is extremists like Bush and Cheney that are destroying this great Republic. After all, how many Americans favor more pollution, no taxes on passive income, allowing torture of prisoners of war, piling up endless debt for our children to pay off and starting wars to secure petroleum? I would submit very damn few. These people are insane and need to be removed from power and incarcerated for the good of mankind.
Bush IS the lowest of the low, a real scumbag. I am totally ashamed to be an American at this juncture of history–I’m proud of much of its past, and hopeful of its future, but Bush and his venal gang of cutthroats is beyond the pale. And it’s NOT just the Republicons and the Independents who gave this evil man the presidency, it is ALL Americans, myself included, who handed power to this lunatic. Bush proclaims himself a Christian who speaks with God. Well, I have to tell him that he is mistaken. God would never have anything to do with this rat. And he has broken every Christian commandment and moral principle there is…Speaking theologically, Bush is the anti-Christ, the devil. Americans no longer have any claim to moral superiority, or even parity–we are all war criminals and frauds.
I would hardly characterize the National Journal as extremist, and that’s where the PollTrack came from — unedited, unamended, unannotated. Indeed, the NJ tends more often to be somewhat rightist, but more importantly, is fairly well-respected for its even-handed reportage and tendency to tell the truth. Extremists see extremists everywhere they go.