SARS
SARS continues to be a dominant story in the news. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Julie Gerberding will testify this week before the Senate Health Committee on SARS, as news reports from Asia highlight theater closings in Beijing, bans on visitors to certain parts of Taiwan, and picture after picture of people everywhere wearing the white masks.
Some experts interviewed over the weekend say that the United States has been "lucky" so far, but warn that the disease may yet hit more severely within this country. Americans are rapidly recalibrating their views of the disease, but have not yet hit the panic button. In the span of just one week, from April 15-16 to April 22-23, the percentage of Americans who said they were worried about being exposed to SARS jumped 11 points, from 22% to 33%. More Americans now say they are worried about SARS than said they were worried about anthrax in the fall of 2001. But only 11% of Americans classify themselves as "very" worried about SARS. Women are a little more worried than men, and Midwesterners are more worried than those elsewhere across the country.
The economic impact of SARS has been climbing in China, elsewhere in Asia, and as close to the United States as Toronto. International air travel is down, but our data suggest only a minimal impact on domestic travel -- at least so far. Only 14% of air travelers (who make up a little more than a third of all Americans) say that they have changed their minds about traveling because of SARS.
Congress Is Back
It may not matter much to some Americans, but Congress is back in session this week, with -- as usual -- a lot on its plate. Two of the main issues the House and Senate will face are tax cuts and bioterrorism.
President Bush has been actively pushing his proposal for additional (and massive) tax-cut legislation, but his plans are meeting stiff resistance from not only Democrats but also some members of his own party. Ohio Sen. George Voinovich, for one, stuck rather defiantly over the weekend to his conviction that no more than $350 billion should be spent on tax cuts.
With regard to the general public, Bush may have an even bigger problem. Americans are not excited about tax cuts, nor do they tend to think that they would do much good. By a 47% to 42% margin, the public says that the Bush tax cut plan is a bad idea, rather than a good idea. Only about a third of Americans say Bush's tax cuts would help the U.S. economy. The rest say tax cuts would have no effect, or would actually hurt the economy.
Bush himself is most probably not going to change his single-minded focus on tax cuts regardless of what polls show. The president has established that once he decides on a course of action or an idea (e.g., the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime from Iraq), he isn't easily deterred.
But Voinovich isn't standing out there on the far edge of Republican sentiment on this issue. Americans who identify themselves as Republicans across the country are surprisingly tepid in their support for the president's plan. Just 58% say tax cuts are a good idea, compared to a predictably lower 38% of independents and 28% of Democrats.
Our latest poll certainly drives home the underlying societal dynamics that are causing Bush (and the Democratic candidates for president) to focus so much on the economy. Asked which will be more important in their vote for president next year, Americans choose the economy over national security, by a 53% to 36% margin. And while Bush is in a generally strong position with the public right now vis-à-vis his handling of the situation in Iraq (76% approval), his rating on handling the economy is a much more anemic 49%. His weaker perceived legitimacy on economic issues makes the president's efforts to convince Americans that they need tax cuts all the more difficult.
This week, the Senate will also ponder "Project BioShield," the Bush administration proposal to encourage the commercial development of drugs designed to stop the spread of dread diseases such as anthrax and the bubonic plague. We don't know how the public stands on the specifics of this bill (which has been criticized as being too friendly toward the major drug companies) but we do know that Americans are no more worried about bioterrorism than they are about terrorism in general. Thirty-five percent are worried that they or their families will be exposed to a deadly disease spread by terrorists in the United States while an almost identical 34% are worried about becoming a victim of terrorism in general. Note that both of these percentages are lower than the number of Americans who say they are worried about SARS.
Bush Hits the Road
The president has become much more visible as the critical phases of military action against Iraq have wound down. Bush is also making speeches with an eye toward the not-too-distant presidential election, the first primaries for which are only about eight months away. He traveled to the important Midwestern state of Ohio last week, made a trip yesterday to meet with Arab Americans in Michigan, and will make a high-visibility appearance on board the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln later this week as it returns to the West Coast after a nine-month deployment.
Bush's overall job approval rating is at 70%. This marks the seventh poll in a row since March 22 that has put this rating within a very tight two-point range between 69% and 71%. What this implies, of course, is the absence of any "victory in Iraq" bounce that might have been expected. We certainly anticipate that Bush's numbers will settle back down again in the months ahead. That's such a strong probability, in fact, that the Republicans recently made public an internal memo from Bush's own pollster -- Matthew Dowd -- predicting just such an occurrence, no doubt attempting to hedge against news stories focusing on the drop in Bush's poll numbers if and when it occurs.
Here is the broad perspective: Coming off of the post-Sept. 11 high point of 90%, Bush's approval rating had fallen as low as 57% in late February and early March before jumping to the current 70% as the war with Iraq began.
Where does that stand in historical comparison? Bush's father had a 76% job approval rating in late April 1991, but that meant little as far as his re-election was concerned; it had dropped to 29% by the end of the next summer. Bill Clinton's approval rating was at 44% in April 1995, and had climbed up to 60% by the summer of 1996. In similar fashion, Ronald Reagan's rating was at a lowly 43% in the spring of 1983, but had climbed to 55% by the next summer as he cruised to victory over Walter Mondale. On the other hand, two other presidents who lost their bids for re-election never were able to pull out of negative territory: Gerald Ford was at 39% in 1975, and only 45% by the summer of 1976. And his successor, Jimmy Carter, had a job approval rating of 37% in early May, but by the following August it had sunk even lower, to 32%.
Just Where Is the Economy Headed?
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan will testify before the House Financial Services Committee this week -- his first public appearance since prostate surgery last week (and also his first public appearance since Bush announced that he would like Greenspan to stay on as Fed chairman after his current term expires in 2004). Greenspan is expected to be "cautiously optimistic" about the economy in his pronouncements.
Our latest UBS/Gallup Index of Investor Optimism data certainly reflect a newfound optimism on the part of investors nationwide. The Index, which had fallen to a very low value of 5 last month, jumped to 66 in April, the largest single-month increase in the seven-year history of the Index. The current ratings are still low, but the trend certainly suggests that investors are hopeful that the economy and stock market are finally turning in the right direction.
Iraq
Ret. U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Jay Garner arrived in Iraq last week in preparation for assuming his position as temporary administrator for that country. Garner's arrival, coupled with reports that Bush may declare that the war is officially over this week, suggest a clear sense that the United States is moving on to the next step in the Iraqi situation. But last week only 36% of Americans said they felt that "for all intents and purposes the war with Iraq is over" -- about the same as the week before.
The remarkably steady 70/30 split in support for the Iraqi war continues without any sign of changing. Last week, our measure of basic support ("Do you favor or oppose the war with Iraq?") came in at a very predictable 71% in favor and 26% opposed. I say "very predictable" because support levels have been almost exactly the same across seven different Gallup Polls in which this question has been asked since the war began. Even when we ask about the war in a different way (i.e., "Was the situation in Iraq worth going to war over?"), we get about the same 70% agreement.
In other words, despite all of the dramatic events that have transpired since the war began, nothing seems to have significantly changed public sentiment one way or the other.
Is Saddam dead or alive? President Bush last week told Tom Brokaw that he thought Saddam may well be dead, but USA Today reported on Monday that Iraq's former deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz (who recently turned himself in to coalition forces) believes that Saddam survived the missile attacks and is still alive. Aziz's reported assertion certainly resonates with the American public's sentiments: 73% say they think Saddam is still alive. That's almost the same as the response we got in early April, but down a little from the 90% who felt he was alive in March.
No weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq thus far, but the American public certainly buys into another stated objective of the military action there -- to make the world safer from terrorism. Sixty-five percent of Americans say that the United States and its allies are now winning the war on terrorism, a spectacular jump from the 37% who felt that way in early March. And when asked directly, 58% say that the war with Iraq has made the United States safer from terrorism.
Rumsfeld's Travels
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, certainly one of the most high-profile Cabinet members in recent memory, is in Qatar and other points in the Middle East region this week before heading to Afghanistan. Rumsfeld's triumphant tour comes on the heels of the departure of Army Secretary Thomas White, said by most observers to be leaving at the behest of Rumsfeld, with whom he reportedly did not get along.
There's no data on what the American public may have thought about White (most Americans probably didn't know who he was) but Rumsfeld continues to maintain a very positive image. When we asked about him in early April, 71% of Americans said they approved of the way he was handling his job, about the same job approval rating as Bush received.
Santorum's Controversial Comments
Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum set off a firestorm of controversy last week with his comments about the anti-sodomy laws now being reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court. Santorum's remarks were widely criticized by members of the gay and lesbian community, who interpreted them as classifying homosexual relations between consenting adults in the same category as incest or polygamy.
Gallup has asked Americans their views on the legality of homosexual relations between consenting adults (the issue at the heart of the Supreme Court case) for over 25 years. The public split evenly in the 1970s on the issue, but became much less likely to support legal homosexual relations in the 1980s as the AIDS epidemic moved to the front pages of the nation's newspapers. In our most recent update of this trend last year, 52% of Americans said they felt homosexual relations between consenting adults should be legal, while a substantial 43% still said that they should not.
Santorum is a Republican and a Catholic, and various observers have
argued that he was attempting to please his party on the one hand
while reflecting the teachings of his church on the other. Our data
show that while a slight majority of Republicans nationwide feel
that homosexual relations should be illegal, 44% say that they
should not. And interestingly enough, Catholics are among the more
liberal groups in the nation on this issue. A full 58% of Catholics
nationwide support the legality of consenting adults engaging in
homosexual relations, significantly higher than the percentage of
Protestants who feel the same way.