Another new low for the [tag]president[/tag].
President Bush’s approval rating has slumped to 31% in a new USA TODAY/[tag]Gallup[/tag] [tag]Poll[/tag], the lowest of his presidency and a warning sign for Republicans in the November elections.
The survey of 1,013 adults, taken Friday through Sunday, shows Bush’s standing down by 3 percentage points in a single week. His disapproval rating also reached a record: 65%.
Tracey Schmitt, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, told USA Today this is “a challenging political environment.” What an interesting way to put it.
It appears that [tag]Bush[/tag] has fallen about as low as he can go among Dems and Independents, but this poll showed fairly substantial erosion in support from the right.
Bush’s fall is being fueled by erosion among support from conservatives and Republicans. In the poll, 52% of conservatives and 68% of Republicans approved of the job he is doing. Both are record lows among those groups. […]
“You hear people say he has a hard core that will never desert him, and that has been the case for most of the administration,” says Charles Franklin, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin who studies presidential approval ratings. “But for the last few months, we started to see that hard core seriously erode in support.”
I guess the public hasn’t been impressed by the staff “shake-up.”