Presidential Job Approval
President Bush's falling job approval ratings have dominated discussion and commentary across the news media in recent days.
One can hardly read a newspaper article or watch a television news story about Bush without reading or hearing a comment about his "record-low job approval ratings." The focus on Bush's ratings fits in well with the litany of recent negative events: the continuing violence in Iraq, the failed nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, the indictment of Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, the apparently near-indictment of key Bush adviser Karl Rove, the indictment of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, and the perception that the federal government bungled its response to Hurricane Katrina.
Journalists, pundits, and commentators generally like to find a structure or overarching theme in which to put the news events of the day, and a drop in public approval of Bush appears to perform that function quite well. That's one of the reasons why we are hearing so much about it.
There is little question that Bush's ratings have been falling, although I think it is a bit of an exaggeration to say they have fallen precipitously as the result of any single event, or even that they have fallen dramatically in a short time period.
Back in 1986, for example, President Ronald Reagan's job approval rating fell 16 percentage points between late October and early December after revelations about the Iran-Contra affair. We've seen nothing like that type of short-term drop for the current president. Instead, I think it's fair to say that there has been a gradual deterioration all year in Bush's ratings, descending from a monthly average rating of 52% in January and February, to the current November average (based on two polls so far) of 39%. (Here are Gallup's monthly averages for this year: January, 52%; February 52%; March 50%; April 49%; May 48%; June 46%; July 47%; August 44%; September 44%; October 41%; November [to date] 39%.)
Bush's most recent rating, from a Nov. 11-13 CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, is 37%. That is his single lowest job approval rating to date, and his disapproval rating of 60% is his single highest disapproval rating to date.
All in all, Bush's job approval ratings have dropped gradually this year, rather than sharply and dramatically. There has been a great deal of attention focused on the events I previously mentioned as the proximate cause for Bush's troubles, but it is apparent that he has had troubles all year.
What are these problems? Based on my analysis of the massive amount of Gallup Poll data collected this year on Bush and the nation's problems, I would say that Bush's eroding job approval ratings have resulted, for the most part, from Americans' negative assessments of the economy and their concern about the situation in Iraq. Bush has also not been helped by some loss in the public's faith in him as an effective manager of government and a president who can be trusted.
Is a rating of 37% catastrophic for a president? Not necessarily. Every president going back for 40 years has received job approval ratings in the 30% range at one point in his presidency: Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush, Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon, and Lyndon Johnson. Of all presidents Gallup has measured since World War II, only John F. Kennedy (whose lowest job approval rating was 56%) and Dwight Eisenhower (whose lowest rating was 48%) finished their days in office without job approval ratings slipping below 40%. In other words, it's the norm, rather than the exception, for a president to have at least one period of time during which his ratings are at Bush's current level.
The proliferation of job approval numbers being spewed forth by various public opinion research firms in recent weeks has led to a great deal of pontification, some of which is -- perhaps inevitably -- not totally accurate.
For example, on Sunday, as Arizona Sen. John McCain said on CBS' Face the Nation: "As a loyal Republican and a person who's loyal to this president, I am, of course, concerned. These numbers are not good. I take some comfort in the knowledge that the last two administrations, in their second term, both Clinton and Reagan, had serious problems."
McCain is certainly correct in saying that Reagan and Clinton had problems in their second terms, but they did not have the types of problems with their job approval ratings that we are seeing for the current president.
Clinton's job approval ratings went up, not down, in his second term as he became only the second president in U.S. history to be impeached by the House of Representatives and tried by the Senate. Clinton's ratings were around the 60% level in the fall of 1997 and early January 1998 when the first revelations about his possible affair with a White House intern became public. His ratings promptly jumped up (not down) to the upper 60% range, and stayed above 60% for the remainder of the year. A late December 1998 poll -- taken after the House voted to impeach him -- gave Clinton a job approval rating of 73%, the highest of his administration. The lowest rating from that point to the end of his term was 55% in June 2000.
As noted, Reagan's ratings took a second-term hit after the Iran-Contra revelations became public in fall 1986. Reagan's job approval rating in his second term bottomed out at 43% (March 1987). In other words, although Reagan had problems in his second term, they did not cause his approval ratings to fall to the level Bush is now seeing.
Will Bush's job approval ratings continue to fall?
There is a historical floor in Gallup's job approval ratings trends: the 22% rating given Harry Truman in February 1952 is the lowest in Gallup history. Other presidents who suffered job approval ratings in the 20% range include Bush the elder, Carter, and Nixon.
But, of course, no one has a clear knowledge of what will be happening in the months ahead. But I can say that -- in my opinion -- the trajectory of the president's ratings from this point on hinge on the public's views of two issue areas, Iraq and the economy, plus intangibles surrounding Americans' views of Bush as a person.
For Bush's ratings to fall further, he will have to lose support from Republicans and perhaps lose a bit more from independents. Bush's approval rating among those who identify themselves as Democrats is now at 7%, about as low as that can go. He has dropped to 28% among independents, which is Bush's lowest recorded rating among this group. He is holding onto roughly 80% approval among Republicans; going forward, this is probably the key dimension to watch. If he loses support among his own party base, it clearly will spell bad news for him.
It's interesting to note that Bush's sub-approval ratings on three key areas; Iraq, foreign affairs, and the economy, are statistically no different from his overall rating. In other words, the public, at this point, does not appear to be differentiating between his performance on each of these areas and its overall evaluation of how he is doing his job.
Bush continues to do better on terrorism, his signature strength to this point. His 48% approval rating on terrorism is 11 percentage points higher than his overall rating. Still, this marks the lowest rating of his administration, the first time it has fallen below majority level, and the first time that more people (49%) have disapproved of his handling of terrorism than have approved.
Iraq
Six in 10 Americans say it was not worth going to war in Iraq, while just 38% say it was. This is the most negative reading on this dimension since the war began in March 2003.
At the same time, 54% of Americans say the United States "made a mistake in sending troops to Iraq"; while 45% say it was not a mistake. In short, Americans are somewhat more likely to say that the war has not been worth it than to say that it was a mistake. The most obvious interpretation of this finding: The public is a little more negative about the way the war has played itself out than it was about the initial decision to be involved. Or perhaps it is just a difference in the way people respond to the word "mistake" as embodied in the one question as opposed to "worth it" in the other. All in all, the best interpretation is simply to say that a majority of Americans now oppose the war in Iraq, no matter how the question is asked.
Still, 46% of Americans hope that the United States will probably or definitely win the war in Iraq eventually, and only 19% say that troops there should be withdrawn immediately.