Bush disapproval at pre-attack level
New poll finds fewer than half would vote to re-elect president
July 22 — Fewer than half of likely voters believe President Bush should be re-elected, according to a poll released Monday that shows that approval of the president’s job performance remains at its lowest level since before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
THE ZOGBY America Poll, conducted Friday through Sunday, showed that 47 percent of likely voters believed that Bush deserved re-election, compared to 32 percent who said it was time for someone new. The remaining 21 percent were undecided.
The poll, conducted by the nonpartisan public opinion firm Zogby International of Genesee, N.Y., surveyed 1,003 likely voters nationwide. The poll reported a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.2 percentage points.
Bush’s positive approval rating, 62 percent, was unchanged from that reported in a similar Zogby poll last week, as was his negative rating, 38 percent. The ratings in the two polls are the lowest Bush has received since the week before Sept. 11, when voters gave him a 50 percent positive rating and a 49 percent negative rating.
Bush’s approval ratings remained extraordinarily high for months after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. But his ratings began inching downward as attention shifted from the military campaign in Afghanistan to the slumping economy in late February, when he 74 percent of likely voters approved of his performance.
“Here is a president who was elected with only 48 percent of the popular vote, and more than 1½ years later, even in a time of war, remains stuck in that position,” said pollster John Zogby, who has conducted surveys for NBC News.
PARTY-LINE SPLIT
With mid-term elections less than four months away, the months of bipartisan support the president has enjoyed have also begun giving way to traditional party-line divisions, the new poll suggested.
Approval and disapproval overwhelmingly tracked party registration, with 83 percent of Republicans saying Bush deserved to be re-elected, compared to only 19 percent of Democrats. The poll indicated, however, that the president has opportunity for improvement — a quarter of Democrats and 28 percent of registered independents said they were still undecided.
The congressional campaign was a statistical dead heat, with 35 percent of voters saying they planned to vote for Democrats and 34 percent saying they would vote for Republicans, a statistically insignificant difference that was essentially unchanged from last week’s 34 percent-to-34 percent tie.
More than a quarter of the electorate, 28 percent, said it had not made up its mind, suggesting that the already fiercely contested campaign was likely to heat up even more as the parties wrestled for control of the divided Congress.
An even clearer indicator of the political landscape was expected later Monday, when NBC News and the Wall Street Journal were scheduled to release results of their latest joint poll, conducted at the same time. |
