There’s been a flurry of polls released in the last several days on Bush’s approval ratings, but none of them are good news for the White House.
A Washington Post/ABC News poll was released over the weekend that showed several interesting trends. Bush’s approval rating was down to 59%, and while that’s still relatively high, it’s down 18 percentage points from just three months ago.
Respondents were asked to rate Bush’s job performance — strongly approve, somewhat approve, strongly disapprove, somewhat disapprove. I’m always interested in the numbers for both “strongly” categories; it shows how many are truly committed to either loving or hating Bush. 35% say they strongly approve of the job Bush is doing, which is the lowest that number has been since before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Meanwhile, 25% say they strongly disapprove of Bush’s job performance, which is the highest this number has been since the Post/ABC started polling on Bush two weeks after his inauguration.
The same poll showed that 58% approved of Bush’s handling of Iraq, the lowest since the war broke out and down from 75% in April. As for Bush’s handling of the economy, more Americans disapprove than approve — 49% to 47%.
Similar polls show similar results.
A Newsweek poll released today, for example, shows Bush’s approval rating at 55%, a 16-point drop from mid-April. 38% said they believe the administration purposely misled the public about Iraq.
A CBS News poll puts Bush’s approval rating at 60%, down 13 points from mid-April. A Pew Research Center poll also reflects a 60% approval rating, which is down 14 points from mid-April.
Obviously, the surge in popularity that Bush enjoyed while our troops were helping to tear down statues of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad has all but vanished. Many of these polls were asking respondents in the middle of last week, as most news outlets were just beginning to report on discrepancies between the White House’s claims about Niger-gate and the truth. With this in mind, I suspect polls done this week would show even lower approval ratings.
All Bush has is the public’s desire to like and trust him, and as that fades, so too does his political support. He has no record of success or accomplishments to speak of or rely upon. After all, everything Bush has done is tainted by failure and incompetence. Bush couldn’t deliver the economic growth he promised, he hasn’t delivered on the job creation he guaranteed, his Afghanistan policies are in tatters, his Iraq policies are deteriorating. Through it all, many Americans believe Bush is at least a credible person who tells the truth, and now Niger-gate is now undermining this belief.
It’s impossible to say whether these poll numbers will continue to fall or if this is just a temporary setback by the White House. The results do show, however, that Bush is politically vulnerable and his re-election is anything but a sure thing.
As Ruy Teixeira noted at the Emerging Democratic Majority, “Is all this hurting Bush’s chances for re-election? You’d better believe it. In the Newsweek poll, just 47 percent say they want to see Bush re-elected to another term as President, while 46 percent say they don’t want to see him re-elected! Moreover, prospective Bush match-ups with specific Democratic candidates yield Bush margins that are much smaller than anything we’ve seen so far. In a match-up with John Kerry, the mighty incumbent has just an 8 point margin (50 percent for Bush to 42 percent for Kerry).”