August Blues For Bush
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in General Politics, Polls40%.
That’s the percentage of our voting population that approves of the job that Bush is doing.
Yikes.
Listen, polls go up and down and it’s impossible (and ill-advised) to conduct your presidency responding only to approval ratings. However, this is less than a year after he was elected to his second term. Bush should be enjoying some pretty healthy numbers right now and the exact opposite is happening. And I don’t care what anybody says, you can’t blame Cindy Sheehan for this one.
Personally, I used to smile when I saw numbers like this, but nowadays they make me a little depressed. As a nation, we shouldn’t be so disapproving of our the job our leader is doing, and yet there it is. And my fear is that what this will end up putting pressure on Bush to withdraw our troops even quicker, even if Iraq isn’t stable.
So what is this? A downward spiral or just a momentary dip? And furthermore, what do you think is causing this drop?
Gallup has more.
This entry was posted on Friday, August 26th, 2005 and is filed under General Politics, Polls. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
August 26th, 2005 at 9:43 pm
These figures should always be posted with a partisan breakdown, if possible. Because that breakdown shows that Bush isn’t necessarily an unpopular president, he’s just an extraordinarily polarising one. When I’ve seen it, the disapproval has been something like 80/20 for democrats, 60/40 for independents and 25/75 for Republicans (my figures aren’t meant to be precise, it’s off the top of my head).
Personally, I think that’s even worse than just being plain unopopular, because you’re destroying the political fabric and cohesion of the country. Also, thanks to the way the electoral college system works, it means he might still be re-elected if an election were called tomorrow – despite his appaling approval rating.
August 27th, 2005 at 10:55 am
I tend to agree with this, although not as strongly. His politics and way he goes about setting policy is basically, “My way or the highway” and that doesn’t help unite anybody.
August 27th, 2005 at 12:18 pm
Aprroval ratings don’t mean much…
I voted for him, and I think he’s doing a fairly miserable job.
My approval only goes about as far as supporting the war and his tax cuts. However, given the same choices I had last time, I’d still vote for him.
August 27th, 2005 at 4:10 pm
It’s a pretty good bet that a big chunk of the disapproval actually comes from the right. (Cultural/social conservatives who think he’s too soft on stuff like abortion, fiscal conservatives and libertarians who don’t like his continued expansion of government, Iraq/terror hawks who don’t think he’s waging those wars aggressively enough, etc.) Therefore the high disapproval ratings don’t necessarily translate to a shift in the Democrats’ favor.
Interestingly, the MSM hardly ever points this out when reporting on approval polls, giving the false impression that public opinion is in fact shifting to the Democrats just because Bush’s approval ratings are down. The MSM may be leftward-biased, but they sure aren’t doing the Democrats any favors by doing this.
August 27th, 2005 at 5:07 pm
I think many, when given the choice between him and Kerry, think that there wasn’t really a choice there to begin with.
I understand your point, but that’s not up to them to decide. Actually, that would show bias, because it would be guessing what people are thinking. That’s not the media’s job. Of course, they could do overarching polls and present his approval ratings, the Democrat’s approval ratings and the Republican’s approval ratings every time they do one of these studies.
But that’s Gallup’s reponsibility, not the MSM’s