Posted on 08/26/2005 4:00:49 PM PDT by RWR8189
PRINCETON, NJ -- A new Gallup Poll reflects further erosion in President George W. Bush's job approval rating, continuing the slow but steady decline evident throughout the year so far. The poll -- conducted Aug. 22-25 -- puts Bush's job approval rating at 40% and his disapproval rating at 56%. Both are the most negative ratings of the Bush administration. Bush's previous low point in approval was 44% (July 25-28, 2005) and his previous high point in disapproval was 53% (June 24-26, 2005).
Bush's average approval rating for the last three Gallup Polls -- all conducted in August -- is 43%. The rolling average has been steadily declining throughout the year. Bush's average approval ratings for January, February, and March of this year were in the 50% to 52% range, but they then began declining slowly in subsequent months. Bush's average approval rating in May was 48%, declining to 46% in June, rising slightly in July, and then declining again to the current three-poll average of 43%.
The following chart shows the rolling average for Bush's job approval rating this year, with each average consisting of three poll measurements.
The current poll finds a drop in support for Bush among independents, and a small drop in support among Republicans to the lowest level of his administration.
In two July polls in which Bush averaged an overall 49% approval rating, an average of 46% of independents approved. In the subsequent three polls (July 25-28, Aug. 5-7, and Aug. 8-11), Bush's overall approval average dropped to 45%, and his average support among independents fell to 37%. Now, in the current poll, 32% of independents approve. (An average of 41% of independents have approved across all 2005 polls to date, excluding the most recent poll.)
(Excerpt) Read more at gallup.com ...
Gallup Ping
FReepmail me if you want to be on or off the list.
Curious why you didn't post the 35-29-34 split on respondents. Real easy to made the numbers look bad when you only poll 29% Republicans.
All of these issues were fully vetted then and there was no way to slant those questions on the ballot...in the end it was Bush or Kerry and the outcome was clear...in terms of pure numbers and in terms of percentages. A clear majority supported the President in his mission in Iraq...and I believe they still do.
Jeez now he will never win re-election.
Its real accurate to poll when you use a random sample and do not reweight the data to a pre-concieved idea of what party identification "should be"
Gallup, at the end of their survey, just simply asks whether you consider yourself to be a Republican, Democrat, or Independent.
Thirty-five percent of poll respondents identified themselves as Democrats, 29% as Republicans, and 34% as independents.
What people are saying is...bomb..bomb..bomb..then start bombing.
When they were doing CNN/Gallup last year, they had 40% Republicans in their sample. It shrunk in this survey.
Non election year, they should just do random adults and not registered voters, because it's always a guess as to who will show up to the polls.
Back to the poll numbers, they aren't great to be honest. Harris was at 40, gallup is at 40, ARG at 36. Rasmussen at 48. You can toss the Arg. Rasmussen probably is an outer number. The president probably is in the low 40's right now. But... he always sinks during the August vacation/recess and bounces back up in September when he is more visible.
It shouldn't make a difference.
USA Today and CNN usually just sponsor the poll, and the rights to report on it exclusively. They probably did so in this poll as well.
A cooked poll, in otherwise
Everyone knows that liberal stays home in the summer while conservatives are out enjoying the sunshine. That is why the polls are not accurate.
The poll that mattered took place in November.......screw the pollsters.
Steven writes in with a question that reflects misinformation that is boomeranging around the Net. We have posted blogs below that go into some detail outlining the whole issue of party identification in a survey context. Our Gallup samples are rigorously executed and checked and weighted against a number of know U.S. Census Bureau parameters: age, gender, region of country, race, and education. Party ID ("In politics, as of today, do you consider yourself a Republican, a Democrat, or an independent?") is not a variable that is measured by the U.S. Census Bureau, is not fixed, and in fact is to a significant degree a measure that is quite likely to change based on the environment. After 9/11, polls showed many more people identifying with the Republican Party than the Democratic Party because citizens were rallying behind the president. This winter during the primary season, polls showed more people identifying with the Democratic Party than the Republican Party because the news coverage was focused almost exclusively on the Democratic primaries. Analyses shows that polls had more identification with the Democrats than Republicans after the Democratic convention this summer, and then more identification with the Republicans than Democrats after the Republican convention. The measure of partisanship we and other pollsters use is not measuring some lifelong fixed value like gender or race. It is an attitudinal identification with one or the other party at the time of the survey. So, if there are forces at work out in the environment that are favorable to the Democratic Party, for example, they will cause more people to identify with the Democratic Party in the survey, and also cause more people to say they will vote for the Democratic candidate.
Here are links to two recent summaries by other students of polling that go over this same concept.
http://mysterypollster.typepad.com.
http://people-press.org/commentary/display.php3?AnalysisID=97
This whole issue of partisan identification is one that pollsters and survey scientists have been discussing and dealing with for years in publications and scholarly conferences. It's not a new issue.
It's surprising that some people on the Net feel that they have suddenly "discovered" something about polling as if pollsters are not highly aware of the variables like party identification that we measure in each survey.
Gallup has a team of experienced editors who have been conducting polls for decades, and teams of statisticians and methodologists who work on every poll. All of this is not to say that there can't be legitimate scientific debate on this and other issues. There can be, just as heart surgeons have conferences and debate the value of different methods of conducting coronary artery bypass surgery. But I can assure all users of Gallup Poll data that the methods we use in pre-election polls are the results of about 70 years of experience in conducting them (since 1936) and intensive, ongoing study and examination of each element of the survey process.
Republicans, have elections, legislation, policy, judicial appointments, and executive order...
If discussing politics who is up and who is down? LOL
Will somebody with deep pockets PLEASE commission a poll that asks WHY his numbers are dropping? If some people are unhappy because he's not Lefty enough and others are unhappy because he's not Righty enough, does it make a lick of sense to lump them all together like that, as if it were a monolithic opinion?
Gallop is a pretty credible pollster. The difference in party affiliation is probably a result of the erosion in Bush's figures.
My theory is that after the President won reelection, he thought the unrelenting attacks from the press would decrease. They got worse, our side left its guard down.
What do we do to turn this around. He could be down to 35% soon, only the core left.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.