Friday, May 12, 2006
Welcome To The 20s, Mr. President
President Bush's approval rating dipped into the 20s for the first time in a major poll, E&P reported today:
President Bush’s job approval rating has fallen to 29%, its lowest mark of his presidency, and down 6% in one month, according to a new Harris poll. And this was before Thursday's revelations about NSA phone surveillance.Of 1,003 U.S. adults surveyed in a telephone poll, 29% think Mr. Bush is doing an “excellent or pretty good” job as president, down from 35% in April and 43% in January.
Roughly one-quarter of U.S. adults say “things in the country are going in the right direction,” while 69% say “things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track.”
I don't believe that the NSA revelations will hurt Bush in the polls, at least in the short term. Most of Bush's current slide in the polls can be traced to disaffection in his base of supporters. The news that the government is spying on its citizens and lying about it to Congress will bring some of the nutty wingers back into the fold -- for a while, anyway.
