President Bush Job Approval (Rasmussen showing post-SOTU decline)

[Mark E. Smith]

Friday February 03, 2006 - Forty-six percent (46%) of American adults approve of the way George W. Bush is performing his role as President. Fifty-three percent (53%) disapprove.

Data for this update is collected via nightly telephone interviews and reported on a three-day rolling average. More than two-thirds of the interviews for today's report were conducted after the President's State-of-the-Union Address.

Jan 31: 48% Approve 51% Disapprove
Feb 01 48% Approve 51% Disapprove
Feb 02: 47% Approve 52% Disapprove
Feb 03: 46% Approve 53% Disapprove

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/Bush_Job_Approval.htm

Putting aside for a moment the fact that the 46% Approval # is way too high, wasn't the SOTU address supposed to give George II a ratings boost? And wouldn't Rasmussen, of all polls, be the one to show that boost most emphatically?

[HereSince1628]

1. And the Congressional hearings on illegal wiretaps aren't even

playing on the news yet.

I'd say the guy has lost most of that surplus political capital he claimed to have last year about this time.

[UpInArms]

9. here's picture of those falling numbers

(they don't even count Rasmussen as a legitimate pollster)

[wordpix2]

15. pretty soon he'll have 10% approval & will be crowing about his mandate

[WhiteTara]

10. he sure knows how to waste surplus

doesn't he? He got a 435 billion dollar surplus from us, gone in a year....political surplus, less than a year. Yep, that guy can spend.

[liberal N proud]

2. Rasmussen is a repuke pollster - and they can't even cover for him

any longer

[A Brand New World]

3. IMHO - I'd say him emphatically defending the oil company

profits has a lot to do with his declining poll numbers amongst the sheeple. It was a big headline here in my small-town Ohio newspaper with a picture of him pointing his finger. HAHA! Pretty dumb move.

[rg302200]

4. Yea same thing on my paper...

I also, am from Ohio, from where do you hail?

[roseBudd]

12. Ohio here too, Cincinnati Enquirer, big headline top of the page

[wordpix2]

16. also, backing off his energy indie statement when SaudiA complained

[0007]

5. Bogus & bias all the way.

[rodeodance]

6. The Awakening?

[Tempest]

8. Bush's base is turning on him

http://www.whotv.com/Global/story.asp?S=4434181&nav=2HAB

A new survey shows President Bush's popularity remains in a slump in Iowa.

According to the Iowa Poll by The Des Moines Register, 61 percent of Iowans think the nation has gotten off on the wrong track. Twenty-nine percent says it's going in the right direction, and ten percent aren't sure.

As for his job performance, 59 percent disapprove. Thirty-seven percent approve, and another four percent aren't sure.



There was another story the day after the SOTU speech and Iowans were not impressed.

[Tempest]

7. Not even a dead cat bounce

Rasmussen had Bush's approval rating at 51% just a week ago.

[chelsea0011]

11. SOTU is a political freebie that almost always increases poll numbers.

But Bush defies the trends by tanking.

[boobooday]

13. After his SOTU speech, it should be 10% approval ratings

The speech was a hate-filled diatribe full of F-Yous to the American people, the Iraqi people, and Muslims worldwide.

An aggressive, surly rant, borderline insane, and he only drops two points?

[Lexingtonian]

14. Yeah, it's supposed to give him a ratings boost

but his numbers started moving up about a week earlier.

So what was really happening was a PR campaign outside mainstream media and not on the Coasts. The GOP is pretty good at ginning this stuff up- it's 'Christian'/right wing radio and cable (CNN, Fox, CBN aka Robertson's channel), Sinclair, activist email and phone lists, churches, small newspapers and such in Red areas.

Republican support is essentially zilch outside their partisans (38%) presently except on "Terror", where they get another 10-11% Independents when they beat on that drum (i.e. 49% total). Anxiety about "Terrorism" appears to be high or is being kept high. Oh, "Terrorism" is only in part about Al Qaeda- it's people being xenophobic and feeling their provincialism painfully in an increasingly globalized world. (That's why the paranoia about 'terrorism' is so much greater in rural areas than the cities Al Qaeda actually concerns itself with.) Dubya is a thin little interposition they cling to between that dreadful Big World Out There Full Of Evil People and People Who Are Virtue Incarnate-themselves. But every major Al Qaeda attack in the West has a good chunk of them deciding that this belief is nonproductive and, indeed, silly, leading them to give up on Bush.

Bush has never actually been able to improve his ratings. He has only been able to turn attention away from things in which his ratings are relatively low to ones where they are relatively high. Where the ratings are set has pretty much only to do with events and facts- and a huge amount of 'political capital' built up during the Nixon years that was the predominant fact of American politics for 30+ years, largely taking the form of latent or active conservatism. Bill Clinton so upset the Right and so defied their power that the Right decided to tap that to the fullest extent possible- or, more crudely, Dubya and Cheney decided to use it up in one big vainglorious spree of a Nixon-type Imperial Presidency.

As Bush's Administration governs for Republican hardliners and against moderates of all stripes, a trend of sacrificing/losing the farthest left-lying political demographics in the name of implementing hardline Republican policies (or, their failure) is the persistent motif. Since Bush is hostage to the hardliners, it can't change. From early 2001 to early 2005 they used up all the residual support they could get out of the left half of the American political spectrum. In the past year-2005- they've used up the support of the right-leaning Indies. That's ~60% of the electorate disillusioned at a pretty constant rate of 12% per year. This year the farthest left political demographic that still gives them pretty full support is moderate Republicans, and the numbers/trend says there should be a Party split by Election Day. The Administration should be polling in the low thirties or high twenties by November.

The vaguely amusing part is that we already know the issues on which things are going to happen and when in each major area of policy or governance- attempts to make the 2003 tax cuts 'permanent', the web of Republican corruption unraveling in convictions, Iraqi "democracy" failing and the Coalition withdrawing as civil war breaks out fully, and further Al Qaeda attacks in the West. The only 2006 intra-Republican wedging issue in doubt IMHO is the precise social policy one- illegal aliens, or right to die, or abortion could be what they decide to focus on. It would be wisest of Republicans to defer and delay all these things past the next elections, of course, but they have no accomplishments to tout for 2005 or 2006 to justify reelection. They're damned if they do act, damned if they don't. Plus, their hardliners sense their moment and federal power slowly melting away to Democrats and will, consequently, insist on a brutish trampling of their moderates' interests and views. We're watching a majority party reach the end of its rope with the electorate.