Bush Approval
Approval of the way President George W. Bush is handling his job as president is at 50%, according to a March 8-11 Gallup Poll.
Bush's job approval rating has been hovering around the 50% level for about a month and a half now. Across six surveys conducted since the end of January, Bush's ratings have been 49%, 52%, 51%, 51%, 49%, and 50%. That averages 50%. Statistically speaking, there has not been any significant variation during this time period. Americans couldn't be more split in their views about the president at this point in time.
As I've noted before, job approval is a critically important indicator for an incumbent president seeking re-election. If job approval drops much below 50%, it's bad news. The higher above 50% the rating goes, the better the president's chances for re-election.
The March job approval ratings of previous incumbent presidents over the last half-century, in the year in which they were seeking re-election, are as follows:
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Bill Clinton in March 1996 -- 54%
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George H.W. Bush in March 1992 -- 40%
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Ronald Reagan in March 1984 -- 54%
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Jimmy Carter in March 1980 -- 39%
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Gerald Ford in March 1976 -- 50%
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Richard Nixon in March 1972 -- 56%
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Lyndon Johnson in March 1964 -- 77%
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Dwight Eisenhower in March 1956 -- 72%
The conclusion to be drawn from this comparison is fairly clear. The current president's ratings are certainly not as weak as the ratings of the last two presidents to go down in defeat in their bids for re-election (Bush the elder and Carter). On the other hand, the current president's ratings are not as strong as any of the five presidents who were re-elected.
I think it's still a bit early to use presidential job approval as a predictor of what is going to happen in the election, but it is important to note that Ford's job approval rating fell into the 40% range after the aforementioned March 1976 poll. That means that each of the three presidents over the last half-century who sought re-election and failed had job approval ratings below 50% as their election year wore on. Obviously, the direction of Bush's approval rating over the next two or three months is going to become a more and more important indicator of what will happen on Nov. 2.
Satisfaction With the Way Things Are Going
Public satisfaction with the way things are going in the United States is now at 39%. While it's not great for Bush that well less than half of Americans are satisfied with the way things are going, it's not fatal either.
Clinton won re-election handily in 1996 with satisfaction ratings between 35% and 45% -- similar to what we're seeing now. And certainly, the current satisfaction levels are nowhere near the dismal readings of 1992, when Bush's father lost his re-election campaign during a year in which satisfaction reached a low point of 14% in June. Gallup did not measure satisfaction in 1980, when Carter lost to Reagan, but the November 1979 satisfaction rating was only 19%, and an early rating in January 1981 was 17%. These numbers suggest that Carter's election environment was quite similar to that of George H.W. Bush.
Gallup's measure of this indicator is now basically back to where it was a year ago, just before the Iraq war. Satisfaction with the way things are going jumped up after the war, sagged back down, and then rose again to 55% early this year after the capture of Saddam Hussein.
Most Important Problem
What's causing a majority of Americans to be dissatisfied with the way things are going in the United States today? We have some answers to that question from our latest monthly update of Gallup's "most important problem" question. The economy is still the major concern in the eyes of Americans. Forty-seven percent mention issues relating to the economy (in some form) as the top problem facing the United States today. International concerns are next, with 11% of Americans mentioning war, 10% mentioning terrorism, and another 7% mentioning national security.
None of these findings are significantly different from the findings for this same question last month. It's still the same old one-two punch: the economy and foreign policy.
The Economy
Americans have clearly become more pessimistic about the direction of the economy over the last month or two. As recently as January, a strong 66% of the public said that economic conditions in this country were getting better. That percentage dropped to 53% in February, and has sunk this month to just 44%. A slightly higher 47% now feel that economic conditions are getting worse. For the first time since last October, there is a net pessimistic evaluation of future economic conditions.
I've pointed out before that this measure of economic expectations (getting better/getting worse) is generally more volatile than the measure asking Americans to rate the current economy as it is today. Thirty-two percent of Americans now rate the economy as excellent or good. That's down a little from the January peak, but no different from what Gallup found in February, and actually better than what we measured during most of last year.
In short, Americans are not changing their evaluations of what they currently see around them so much as they are becoming more negative in their guesses about what's going to happen down the road.
It's not entirely clear to me why the public's concern over the direction of the economy has suddenly become so acute, say as compared with their evaluations in December 2003 and January 2004. Certainly, the drop in the stock market in recent weeks has taken its toll. But there haven't been hundreds of thousands of sudden layoffs over the last several months, and I doubt that companies have suddenly changed their hiring practices radically.
Indeed, from a larger perspective, there has been little real change in the unemployment rate over the last few months, and there are actually a number of positive indicators suggesting that the economy is improving.
So why has consumer confidence dropped, and why are Americans more focused in particular on the jobs situation? I think part of the answer is fairly simple: politics.
The airwaves and newspapers have been filled with coverage of the Democratic primaries and caucuses over the last several weeks, and much of that coverage has centered on the Democratic candidates' angry contentions that the economy is in ruins and that jobs are as scarce as icebergs in the Gulf of Mexico. The candidates have vied with one another to position themselves as most sympathetic to the plight of workers, and they have invoked trade agreements and other Republican policies as the proximate sources of the nation's economic woes.
In particular, future Democratic nominee John Kerry has focused on the buzzword, "outsourcing" -- a word that we will no doubt continue to hear many, many times over during this year's presidential campaign.
There again, there hasn't been one precipitating event that has caused outsourcing to suddenly become the concern du jour. It's not a new phenomenon; millions of manufacturing jobs have been exported overseas over the last 30 years, as even a cursory glance at the labels on products on any Wal-Mart shelf will attest. Attention is now being focused on a similar pattern in white-collar jobs, including call center workers and computer programmers in particular.
In some ways, it is difficult to determine if the net impact of this movement of jobs overseas is even completely negative. Bush administration officials got into trouble a few weeks ago when they suggested that the immediate losses in jobs that have been outsourced may be offset by the overall positive benefit to the U.S. companies involved (namely, that the increase in productivity and lower costs of production enable companies to hire more workers, doing different jobs, within the United States). The Democratic candidates and most other observers have taken a much more short-term view, denouncing the whole process as one that could be the ruination of the American work force.
Regardless of the reality of the situation, it's clear that the media focus on outsourcing and the attention it has been given in the political campaign is having an effect on the perceptions of the average American. The latest Gallup Poll shows that 41% of Americans are very concerned that they personally, or a friend or relative, might lose a job because the employer is moving that job to a foreign country. Another 20% are somewhat concerned.
Politically speaking, 58% of Americans told Gallup in our March 5-7 survey that the issue of outsourcing is going to be very important in determining their votes for president this year. Responses to this question are very politicized. A full 72% of Democrats say that outsourcing will very important to their votes, compared with 59% of independents and only 42% of Republicans. It's too soon to say if outsourcing will in fact end up being this important of an issue next fall, but it's clear that it's one that is resonating with the public at this point in time.
All of this is being played out in a context in which only 30% of Americans who are employed or looking for work think now is a good time to be looking for a job (based on our March 8-11 survey). This measure reached as high as 78% in the summer of 2000.
It's not exactly clear what either Bush or Kerry plan to do about the job outsourcing problem, but there is little doubt that both candidates will address the issue in great detail in the months leading up to the election.
At the same time, I believe it's possible that consumer confidence may go up over the next several months. Why? In large part, because I think the more negative media focus on the economy will decrease a bit as the presidential campaign enters into its famous "doldrums" period between now and the summer conventions. This year may be a bit different (after all, there have already been political ads unleashed by both the Bush and Kerry campaigns), but it's still likely that media coverage will drift away from politics somewhat in April, May, and June.
It's also possible, of course, that the economy will pick up in real economic terms. That certainly appears to be the prediction of Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan. In a speech at a financial conference at Boston College late last week, Greenspan said: "In all likelihood, employment will begin to increase more quickly before long as output continues to expand."