More Polls: What Difference Do They Make?

by DemFromCT

Another week, another loss of credibility. Gallup has Bush at a steady 37% despite losing the argument over leaking.

The latest USA Today/Gallup poll finds more than 6 in 10 Americans critical of President George W. Bush on the leak controversy. The more closely people are following the issue, the more likely they are to say he did something illegal rather than unethical. The poll also shows that 37% of Americans continue to approve of Bush's job performance, unchanged from last month. While that is a low rating -- and among the lowest of the Bush administration -- it represents no change in four Gallup polls conducted since the end of February.

ABC/WaPo has this:

Political reversals at home and continued bad news from Iraq have dragged President Bush's standing with the public to a new low, at the same time that Republican fortunes on Capitol Hill also are deteriorating, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll.

The survey found that 38 percent of the public approve of the job Bush is doing, down three percentage points in the past month and his worst showing in Post-ABC polling since he became president. Sixty percent disapprove of his performance.

And CBS adds:

Continued dissatisfaction with President Bush and the Iraq war could spell trouble for Republicans in the fall congressional elections.

More than one-third of voters in a CBS News poll say they will think of their vote as a vote against Mr. Bush, while just 14 percent will think of it as a vote for him. Forty-five percent say their view of the president will not be a factor in how they vote.

Those numbers contrast sharply with the run-up to the 2002 midterm elections, in which Republicans won historic gains. Four years ago, 31 percent said their vote would be made in support of the president, versus just 19 percent who thought of their vote as a statement against him.

The results, coupled with Prof. Franklin's previous analysis at Political Arithmetik, couldn't be worse: a continued and stready erosion of support, though the rate of decline has slowed. And this time, the president's approval matter to those who will be at the polls in November.

As noted on this blog, it's one of the main reasons for ginning up the immigration issue, still behind Iraq as an issue of importance to voters. If only 14% of voters will go to the polls in support of Bush and his policies:

A separate half of the sample was asked if their vote would be for or against President Bush’s policies. Results were much the same as for the President himself: 18% of voters said they would vote to back the policies, 35% vote against them. 40% said it wouldn’t be a factor.
It appears most local candidates would not even benefit from a visit or an endorsement from the President. Only 10% of voters would be more likely to back a candidate today with a presidential endorsement. Three times as many, 31%, would be less likely to vote for that candidate.

and if

registered voters today would back a generic Democrat over a generic Republican for the House of Representatives by a ten-point margin. Independents – usually a critical swing vote – would do so by a two-to-one margin.

then immigration, Iran and whatever else the desperate Republicans can throw up against the wall are likely to be the issues they want to discuss.

And the leaker-in-chief issue? As noted yesterday, leaks are not high on voters' importance list, but erosion of Presidential credibility suffused these polling results.  But don't expect more than a few points more drop in Bush's polls. There are only Bushbots left, incapable of selecting other than a generic Republican in polls. As Prof. Franklin pointed out:

One thing that is clear is that opposition partisans play a relatively minor role in setting the low-point of approval. Between 23% and 40% overall approval, support among the opposition doesn't really vary systematically with overall approval. A president at low ebb can expect between 10% and 20% support from opposition partisans, and that doesn't seem to decline very sharply at all as overall approval falls from 40% to 20%. In the very lowest case, Truman, support from Republicans fell noticeably below that for other presidents, to an astonishing 4.5%. No one else before G.W. Bush has fallen as low as 10%. At the low point of Bush approval on November 13, Democratic support fell to an almost Turmanesque 7%. The most recent Gallup poll, completed March 1, finds Democratic support at 10%, still the lowest of any president since Truman, though not far from Clinton (11.8%) and the elder Bush (11.3%). Nonetheless, once approval is this low among opposition partisans, they simply can't drive it much lower because there is almost no one left to change their mind.

And that's the way it is likely to remain.

Comments

[Mimikatz]

Bush is now at 32% in California, with only 59% of Repubs approving. And 41% of Repubs disapprove of his conduct of the war. See here.

Perhaps we will learn something from the special election in CA-50 today, to pick a replacement for the Dukestir.

[DemFromCT]

I think 32% is as low as he goes anywhere. The 59% approval of Rs is interesting. So is the read of CA mood... Dem landslide or 'throw all the bums out'?

"It's the increasingly partisan rancor that characterizes the Congress," DiCamillo said. "The very partisan Republican orientation of the House is not very well received. The public wants compromises to be reached and they generally don't see many of those things taking place in Congress these days."

[DemFromCT]

Speaking of pols and polls:

But in the new Post-ABC News poll, completed Sunday, 50 percent of respondents said they trusted the Democrats to better handle the immigration issue, while 38 percent trusted Republicans. A third of Americans approved of the president's handling of the immigration issue, while 61 percent disapproved. Only his handling of gas prices showed lower approval ratings.

[bling]

I'd be interested in getting some context from Nixon's low point, which was somewhere around 26%, I believe. I imagine you can get that low only when some of your hard-core loyalists realize that your continued presence on the national stage is doing more harm than good and they want you to go away in order to stop the bleeding. I don't think we're quite there yet, but Iraq and Plame/Wilson are like cement shoes. And what's gotta be very scary for the White House is that there is no end in sight on either of these stories. WIth the war, they have options. With the leak investigation, it's completely out of their hands and the potential for more bad news is considerable. Let's not forget, Bush promoted both Rove and Hadley coming into his second term. If both of them get indicted - and why else would Fitz leave these guys off his witness list? - and if the president can be shown to have knowledge of their actions in the whole Wilson smear campaign, how exactly are they going to explain his rewarding them for bad/criminal behaivor. Big ifs, yes, but the 20s are not at all out of the question.

[al-Fubar]

I don't think Bush could fall into the Nixonian 20s, due to the change in political culture. He'd poll 30 on the day the marshalls put him on a plane for The Hague.

[bad]

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Tuesday, April 11, 2006

PATRICK FITZGERALD: OOPS, NEVER MIND [Byron York]

An embarrassing move this afternoon from CIA leak prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. In his now-famous court filing in which he said that former Cheney chief of staff Lewis Libby testified that he had been authorized to leak portions of the then-classified National Intelligence Estimate, Fitzgerald wrote, "Defendant understood that he was to tell [New York Times reporter Judith] Miller, among other things, that a key judgment of the NIE held that Iraq was 'vigorously trying to procure' uranium."

That sentence led a number of reporters and commentators to suggest that, beyond the issue of the leak itself, the administration was lying about the NIE, because the African uranium segment was not in fact among the NIE's key judgments. For example, in a front page story on Sunday, the Washington Post reported:

At Cheney's instruction, Libby testified, he told Miller that the uranium story was a "key judgment" of the intelligence estimate, a term of art indicating there was consensus on a question of central importance.
In fact, the alleged effort to buy uranium was not among the estimate's key judgments, which were identified by a headline and bold type and set out in bullet form in the first five pages of the 96-page document.

A few hours ago, however, Fitzgerald sent a letter to judge Reggie Walton, asking to correct his filing. The letter reads:

We are writing to correct a sentence from the Government's Response to Defendant's Third Motion to Compel Discovery, filed on April 5, 2006. The sentence, which is the second sentence of the second paragraph on page 23, reads, 'Defendant understood that he was to tell Miller, among other things, that a key judgment of the NIE held that Iraq was 'vigorously trying to procure' uranium." That sentence should read, "Defendant understood that he was to tell Miller, among other things, some of the key judgments of the NIE, and that the NIE stated that Iraq was 'vigorously trying to procure' uranium."
Never mind.

[fedup]

Dear sad,

It still all depends on what "leak" means doesn't it. Splitting hairs and legalistic defenses are all you have left. It really is 'sad'.

Sorry.

[Sara]

In inswer to the question of where Nixon was -- as we might compare to Bush Jr. -- the following two offerings from Stanley Kutler's Wars of Watergate.

In June of 1974 just after Nixon returned from his Egyptian trip, his "hold on office" rose by 3 points -- meaning that support for removal fell from 48% to 44%. (If you remember, this trip included a train trip in an open car, where Nixon was acclaimed along the way -- great pictures.)

However after the Supremes rendered their Eight-zip decision in US v. Nixon tapes case, and the public Judiciary Hearings began -- on the second day, July 26, 1974 Nixon had a 63% disapproval score and a 21% support position.

Polls make lots of different kinds of differences. I think everyone notes that since GWB dropped below the high 40's his critics have been given more space and time in the media -- Afterall they do attend to their mass audience. But others tend to follow the lead of the seeming majority -- and for at least the last six months bush believers have not really been a majority. The range of public opinion is more dynamic than a year ago -- and it is moving against Bush.

What Bush does not have going for him is the ability to recover by taking a train trip in Egypt as Nixon did -- First, he is a terrible tourist, and second, he can't go anywhere unless the streets are swept of people. He just doesn't have a recovery plan.

I suspect Bush's poll numbers will continue to fall into the low 30's or even high 20's and then plateau when all that is left is his hard core base. While I would agree that Iraq is a major factor -- never overlook the price of Gas. Pump Prices are understood by many as the result of Iraq and not a more independent variable -- but people get steamed when they look at the posted price when they fill up.

I believe the narrative and a decent interpretation of the CIA outing matter is really missing from the media. Remember, this story has been unrolling now for nearly three years -- and drip drip drip does not suit short attention spans. We meed a mass media something that puts all the relevant facts into a narrative that can easily be understood. As things stand now, it is far too disjointed to be understood by non-news junkies.