Public Opinion About Dick Cheney

As many news observers know by now, Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot a hunting companion on a Texas ranch Saturday. Since the incident, we here at Gallup have received several inquiries about the public's views of the vice president.

Gallup has not conducted any surveys since the weekend shooting incident, but a recent CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, taken Jan. 20-22, finds that 41% of Americans say they approve and 47% disapprove of the way Cheney is handling his job as vice president. 

Gallup has asked Americans to rate Cheney seven times since he first took office. In 2001, roughly 6 in 10 Americans said they approved of Cheney, with a 63% rating in April 2001 and a 60% rating in May 2001. In January 2002, a few months after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Cheney's approval rating reached its highest point, 68%. By January 2004, his approval ratings declined to 56%, and then dropped to 50% by January 2005. When Gallup asked this question in November 2005, just 36% approved of Cheney, the lowest rating of his term in office.

The Jan. 20-22 poll also shows the expected sharp partisan divisions in Cheney's approval ratings. Three in four Republicans (75%) approve of the way Cheney is handling his job as vice president, compared with 31% of independents and just 18% of Democrats.

Interestingly, as the table shows, the trends in Cheney's approval ratings closely mirror the trends in President George W. Bush's approval ratings, with the lone exception of the January 2002 survey, in which Bush's extraordinarily high rating (84% approval) was 16 points higher than Cheney's. In the six other times that Gallup measured Cheney's approval, there have been only a few points difference between Bush and Cheney. 

It remains to be seen, of course, whether the shooting incident will create a new gap in the president's and vice president's ratings.  

Last December, Gallup also asked Americans to rate their overall opinion of the vice president. The Dec. 16-18, 2005, CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll found that 41% of Americans had a favorable opinion of Cheney, while half (50%) had an unfavorable opinion of him.

This 41% favorable rating marks the lowest that Cheney has received during his term in office. However, it is essentially even with what Gallup measured in October 2005 (43% in mid-October, 42% in late October), following the indictment of Cheney's former chief of staff I. Lewis Libby on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice for allegedly leaking the name of a CIA employee.

Also of interest, while Bush's and Cheney's approval ratings are roughly aligned with one another, Americans have been consistently been more likely to express a favorable view of Bush rather than Cheney. There is one exception to this: In April 2001, Americans were equally likely to say they had a favorable opinion of Bush (65%) as they were to have a favorable opinion of Cheney (64%). 

The largest variation between Bush and Cheney's favorable ratings occurred in 2002, when 83% of Americans rated Bush favorably and 67% rated Cheney favorably. In the most recent survey, there was a five-point difference in ratings, with Bush at 46% and Cheney at 41%.

Again, it is important to note that these measures were recorded prior to last weekend's shooting. It is still unclear at this point what Cheney's approval and favorable ratings will be following this incident.