Improving Impressions-at 6/17 start of book tour, Clinton's approval is62%

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http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/Polls/clinton_poll_040622.html

Improving Impressions
Poll: Time Tempers Take on Bill Clinton

Analysis By Cheryl Arnedt



June 22, 2004— Time, the great healer, is working its wonders for Bill Clinton, as it has for many an ex-president before him.

At the start of Clinton's memoir book tour, his retrospective job approval rating, 62 percent, tops its average during his presidency. And personal assessments of Clinton, while still hardly robust, have improved significantly since he called Washington home, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll.

Sampling, data collection and tabulation for this poll were done by TNS.

Americans now split evenly on Clinton "as a person." Half say they've got a favorable impression of him, 49 percent unfavorable. Opinions of him were much more unfavorable — as high as 67 percent negative — during the Monica Lewinsky scandal and its aftermath.

It was assessments of Clinton's job performance — his professional rating, rather than his personal one — that sustained him during the scandal and his impeachment trial. Across his presidency, an average of 57 percent of Americans approved of his work in office, a mid-tier rating for postwar presidents that matches Ronald Reagan's.

Clinton's current 62 percent approval, 37 percent disapproval retrospective job rating is similar to his valedictory rating (65 percent approval, 32 percent disapproval at the end of his presidency) — one that tends to serve more as a farewell than as a true job evaluation. During his career, Clinton's approval hit bottom during the long hangover from the 1990-91 recession (43 percent in June 1993) and topped out shortly after the Lewinsky scandal broke (69 percent in January 1998). <snip>


This ABC News/Washington Post poll was conducted by telephone June 17-20 among a random national sample of 1,201 adults. The results have a three-point error margin. Sampling, data collection and tabulation were done by TNS