GALLUP NEWS SERVICE
Princeton, NJ--For a variety of reasons, American presidents in the second half of the twentieth century have suffered from declining job approval ratings as their terms in office have come to an end. Graphs show a downward trend in most presidents' approval trends, not a steady or increasing pattern. For Bill Clinton, however, it has been a different story. Through the first two quarters of 2000, Clinton appears to be contradicting this historic pattern. Clinton's approval ratings have remained robust, and if his last two quarters remain as healthy as they have been, he will leave office as the one of few presidents in the modern era to have avoided the sag in ratings which seems to characterize many presidents' final years in office.
Ford, Carter and Bush
Three presidents since World War II have unsuccessfully sought
re-election -- Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George Bush -- and the
fact that their job approval ratings were declining in their last
year in office is to a degree the precise reason why it became
their final year.
- Jimmy Carter's administration was marked in its last years by the continuing trauma of the captured U.S. hostages in Iran, by rampaging inflation, and by gas shortages. Carter's overall job approval average of 45.5% for his entire term is roughly tied with Harry Truman's as the lowest of any president since WWII. By 1979 and 1980, Carter had the lowest marks of all,
- George Bush enjoyed extremely high job approval ratings in 1991 as a result of the successful Persian Gulf War, and appeared a shoe-in for re-election. The nation's economy became more and more of a factor in his ratings, however, and by the time of the '92 election the public's approval of the job Bush was doing had fallen to near record lows. Because of his remarkably high job approval numbers in the first two or three years of his administration, Bush's overall term average still ended up at a very high 61%, behind only JFK and Dwight Eisenhower. But the extraordinary changes in the public's perception of Bush are evident in a comparison of his 1991 job approval ratings, 70%, with his average job approval in 1992, 41%.
Two other presidents have had unique reasons for their term-ending slide in approval ratings. Lyndon Johnson's announcement in the spring of 1968 that he would not seek re-election was based on the turmoil in the country over Vietnam. Johnson averaged 55% over his entire term in office, but had a 74% average in the months before he was swept to re-election in 1964. Johnson's second-term job approval average fell to 50%, including a 42% average for 1968, his last year in office.
Richard Nixon resigned amidst plummeting job approval ratings and the Watergate impeachment proceedings. He averaged 56% in his first term, but his job approval fell to a very low 34% over 1973 and 1974 as the Watergate saga unfolded, leading to his resignation in August 1974. For the first half of 1974, Nixon's average job approval rating was just 25%.
Harry Truman, who had surprised the country by winning a second term (his first elected term) in 1948 despite low job approval (and despite being behind in pre-election polls), did not attempt to run for a second elected term in 1952. Truman averaged 57% in the his first term (which began in the spring of 1945 upon the death of Franklin Roosevelt), but managed only 35% in his second term, caused in part by public dissatisfaction with U.S. involvement in the war in Korea in the final years of his administration. Truman had very low average yearly ratings of 26% and 30% in his last two years in office.
Reagan Hurt by Iran-Contra
In addition to Bill Clinton, there have been two full two-term
presidents since World War II -- Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald
Reagan. Eisenhower's ratings throughout his entire second term were
lower than those in his first, 61% compared to 70%. Eisenhower had
a low 54% in 1958, and ended with an average of 61% for his last
term.
Reagan's first term began with low job approval ratings, driven by the continuation of the poor economy that had helped him beat Carter in 1980. Reagan's overall average for his first term was 50%. But, by the beginning of his second term, his ratings were up. Then the Iran-Contra affair hit the press, the Reagan's job approval fell in the last two years of his term. Reagan averaged 55% for his second term, but in his next-to-last year in office, 1987, he averaged only 48%, and ended with a below average (for his second term) 53% in 1988.
John F. Kennedy is of course a special case -- the only president to die in office since FDR, and along with Nixon, one of only two presidents who left office in the middle of a term. JFK obtained the highest average job approval of any president since World War II -- an average of 70% over the 1000 days of his administration. Still, even Kennedy's ratings were slipping some in 1963, and his ill-fated trip to Dallas in November of that year was, in part, an attempt to bolster his support in the South, where his ratings had dropped most.
Clinton's Job Approval Ratings, Paradoxically, Buoyed by
the Lewinsky Crisis
Bill Clinton has -- like Reagan -- gained in the public's rating of
his job performance as his two terms have unfolded, but unlike
Reagan, Clinton's job ratings have thus far remained high.
Clinton began his first term with fairly anemic job ratings, averaging 49% in 1993, 46% in 1994, and 47% in 1995. Clinton's overall low point in terms of the public's assessment of his job came with a 37% rating in June of 1993, and with two different ratings of 39% in August and September of 1994. But, by 1996, as he sought re-election, Clinton's job approval numbers began to rise, and by the end of that year, not only had he been re-elected, but he had climbed to a job approval rating average of 56% for the year. From that point on, things got even better. In 1997, Clinton averaged 58%.
Then, in 1998, survey researchers noted one of the more fascinating paradoxes of recent polling history. The Monica Lewinsky crisis unfolded, Clinton's presidency was threatened, and -- counter to almost all expectations -- Clinton's job approval continued to go up, not down. Clinton's average job approval rating in 1998, the year in which the House of Representatives officially impeached Clinton, was 64%, the highest of his term. In a December 1998 poll, Clinton received a job approval rating of 73%, the highest -- so far -- of his entire administration. Clinton continued with these types of high numbers, again reaching 70% in a February poll, throughout the first months of 1999. Again ironically, as the impeachment crisis ended with the vote to acquit in the U.S. Senate, Clinton's numbers began to sag. For the entire year of 1999, he averaged 61%.
Clinton's job approval has remained at this level for the first two quarters of this year, 61% for the first quarter, and 58% for the second. In Gallup's most recent poll, conducted August 11-12, his rating was 58%, and if he continues at about this level, he is on track to finish 2000 with an average in the high 50s, above his overall term average and just slightly below his high point in 1998. Clinton's second term is likely to give him one of the higher terms in polling history -- behind only Eisenhower's first term, JFK's abbreviated tenure in office, the time period between November 1963 and January 1965 for Lyndon Johnson, and George Bush's first (and only) term.