Posted on 05/24/2004 4:32:26 PM PDT by SierraWasp
Bush poll numbers drop to new low
President seeks to assure nation about strategy in Iraq
By Corbett B. Daly, CBS MarketWatch Last Update: 7:17 PM ET May 24, 2004
WASHINGTON (CBS.MW) -- As President Bush seeks to assure Americans he has strategy for transferring power in Iraq to an interim government run by Iraqis at the end of next month, a newly released CBS News poll shows his overall approval rating has dipped to the lowest level of his presidency.
More than half of Americans, 52 percent, now disapprove of the way Bush is doing his job, while 41 percent approve of his performance, the lowest rating since he has been in office. That compares with 49 percent disapproval and 44 percent approval just two weeks ago.
And there is a growing sense that the state of the U.S. economy is sliding downward.
On the economy, 52 percent of Americans believe the economy is in "good" shape, compared to 55 percent in April. Forty-seven percent believe it is in "bad" shape, up from 45 percent in April.
The nationwide poll was conducted in a telephone survey of 1,113 adults from Thursday through Sunday and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percent. (Link) Read the poll in its entirety.
The poll is released just hours before Bush was scheduled to make a major speech at the U.S. Army War College in Pennsylvania to assure Americans he has a strategy for handing power over to Iraqis after a year of violence in Iraq.
And it comes hours after crude oil and gasoline futures closed Monday at all-time highs on the New York Mercantile exchange. Crude for July delivery closed at a record high of $41.72 a barrel, up $1.79, or 4.5 percent. In turn, June gasoline settled at an all-time high of $1.4578 a gallon, up 4.1 cents, or 2.9 percent. Read the full story.
But the survey also follows news from the Labor Department that the economy has added 708,000 jobs since January and the unemployment rate has fallen to 5.6 percent in April.
Asked if the administration was frustrated that approval numbers on the economy are not improving, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said actual employment figures are moving in the right direction.
"There is a lot of focus on events going on in Iraq right now, we understand that, but the economy is growing stronger and there is a strong recovery underway and the president is confident in the direction the economy is moving," McClellan told reporters Monday.
The Iraq approval rating fell to 34 percent from 39 percent two weeks ago and 57 percent a year ago, while his disapproval rating rose to 61 percent from 58 percent in early May and 20 percent a year earlier.
Norman Ornstein, a scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said the problems in Iraq are spilling over into the economy ratings.
"If people think we are lost at sea then they have a greater tendency to believe we haven't really turned the corner on the economy," Ornstein said.
That concept is reinforced in the right track/wrong track question favored by pollsters.
Sixty-five percent of respondents believe the United States is on the "wrong track," up sharply from 55 percent in April and 36 percent a year earlier. Thirty percent of respondents believe the United States is on the "right track," down from 36 percent in April and 56 percent in April of last year.
That's good news for Democratic challenger John Kerry, who widened his lead over Bush in a hypothetical and fictional election held today. Kerry now has support from 49 percent of registered voters, compared to 41 percent for Bush. That's up from 46 percent for Kerry and 44 percent for Bush in April.
On gas prices, Americans blame the major oil companies for the rise in prices, followed by the oil-producing nations. Sixty-two percent say a "great deal" of the blame for rising prices falls on oil companies, while 55 percent believe a "great deal" of the blame falls on oil-producing nations. Thirty-four percent place a "great deal" of the blame on the war in Iraq.
Still, 58 percent of respondents believe a president can do "a lot" about the price of gasoline, while 33 percent believe a president has little power to affect the price.
Sung Won Sohn, an economist at Wells Fargo Bank in Minnesota, says the rise in gas prices is one reason the sentiment about the economy is not stronger.
"Higher prices tend to hurt people at the lower end more than people at the upper end," Sohn said, adding "there are lot more voters in the lower half than the upper half and it probably shows up in the surveys."
It's only news when the numbers are DOWN!
The "Journalists" weep and wail and gnash their teeth about "Premptive War," while practicing "Premptive Journalism!" They are determined to sink this great nation!!!
"Adults." Not, "registered voters," or "likely voters." This poll is pure cr@p.
What will they say tomorrow when Bush's numbers are up?
Because they're morons, maybe?
Then all you will hear are crickets.
I just can't wait till someone sticks a broomhandle in their spokes at high speed!!!
I agree! Check out my key words for the post!!!
Unfortunately, it appears that the public will have to learn that DESPITE the media.
Another poll just using adults...
Bush Speech to Shore Up Iraq Policy
Excerpted from Foxnews.
Holy Cripe! This was posted before 7:AM today? No wonder I missed it! I skimmed over the top parts of each side-bar to see if it was posted today, but NO WONDER!!!
I know, I know, I shoulda done a danged search!!!
If that happens, it will be reported this way:
President Bush's approval ratings got a much-needed boost after last night's speech, although the temporary bump was much lower than expected. "For a President to give a major speech on a critical issue like Iraq, and only see a X% increase in his poll numbers demonstrates how much trouble he is in with the voters," said political consultant James Carville.
The internals of the CBS polls are always noteworthy.
Total Respondents for this poll - 1112
Democrats - 401 - 36%
Independents - 381 - 34.2%
Republicans - 330 - 29.6
In the last two presidential election cycles the actual voting breakdown by party has been
Democrats 39%
Republicans 35%
Independents 27% - in 1996 this was 26%
Stick it CBS.
be interesting to see the numbers if you crunched the CBS numbers to reach the 39 35 27 breakdown you speak of.
Oh, come on, when else are they going to release a poll of adults taken over the weekend?
Just in time for a speech that they will NOT air nor will they admit it is on.
FREEP your TV stations!
Screw CBS. And all the other "Big Network" media outlets.
Haven't watched any of them for several years now.
I'll stand with the President and the boots on the ground.
And their penalty should be the same as any traitor. Oooo but we must be "sensitive and tolerant" of those who would bring us down /sarc.
There actions are no less deserving of criminal penalty than a terrorist who gets caught making the bombs with which to attack us.
I am sick of these commie POS. "Free press" my A$$.
/rant
They'll talk about abused prisoners, of course.
And there is a growing sense that the state of the U.S. economy is sliding downward.
WOW!!!
Just 2% above his father at this time...
"It won't be long NOW!!"
Communist Broadcating Network, did not carry the speech but had the phony poll. Boycott CBS and let the advertisers know via EMAIL.
Ops4 God BLess America!
Oh yeah, our local radio talk show curmudgeon interviewed a woman from CBS just before the 6:00 pm news this evening. She sounded positively thrilled that Bush's numbers were down!
THE WINE & CHEESE BIAS AT CBS NEWS: (RealClearPolitics.com)Does CBS News conduct all of its polling at cocktail parties on the Upper East Side of Manhattan? That's what comes to mind after reading the thing they tried to pass off as an objective poll yesterday.
Thanks to the fact that two other polls were conducted over the same time period and released on the same day, we can get a better idea of just how the CBS poll compares:
* This is the number for registered voters and differs from the "likely voter" number on our head-to-head poll page.You'll notice the bias isn't pro-Kerry, it's anti-Bush. As we've mentioned before, CBS News/NY Times usually undersamples Republicans and oversamples Democrats and Independents, leading to weaker numbers all around for the President.
If you go back, as I did this morning, and look at job approval numbers from the same group of pollsters for the first five and a half months of 2004, you can see the consistency of the CBS/NYT bias more clearly.
In every instance except one this year (and a very iffy one at that), CBS/NYT produced the worst job approval number of any of the three polls during a comparative time period.
Averaging the numbers from 2004 yields the following result:
So CBS/NYT is spitting out job approval numbers that run, on average, about 4.25% lower than their competitors and a full 3% lower than the average of all 29 polls taken by the three groups this year.
Is this a shocking revelation? Of course not. But it does help to quantify the anti-Bush bias inherent in the CBS/NYT polls and to provide a guideline for interpreting future results. - T. Bevan 9:03 am
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