[Support Katrina relief!]
Three new polls out this morning featuring job ratings of George W. Bush’s handling of the response to Hurricane Katrina. All three show a majority of Americans expressing disapproval:
- CBS News interviewed 725 adults over the last two evenings (9/6-7, sampling error 4%). Thirty-eight percent (38%) approved and 58% disapproved the "the way George W. Bush has handled the response to Hurricane Katrina."
- Zogby International interviewed 1,157 "likely voters" over the same evenings (9/6-7, sampling error 2.9%). They found 36% rating the way Bush handled "Hurricane Katrina" as excellent or good, 60% rated it fair or poor.
- Survey USA interviewed another 1,200 adults last night (9/7 sampling error 2.9%). Forty-one percent (41%) approved and 55% disproved of "President Bush’s response to Hurricane Katrina." Over the last two nights, the SurveyUSA results averaged 42% approval, 54% disapproval.
Most notably, for those that have been following our discussion of the SurveyUSA’s tracking of attitudes on Katrina using their automated poll methodology, the CBS poll confirms the decline in confidence in Bush’s handling of the response to Katrina. They showed Bush’s Katrina approval rating dropping 16 points (from 54% to 38%) since 8/30-31. SurveyUSA showed approval dropping from 48% to 41% over the same period.
On the other hand, the CBS News survey showed no significant change over the last week in President Bush’ overall job rating, the very first question asked on the CBS survey. Last week, on the CBS survey, 41% approved and 52% disapproved of "the way George W. Bush is handling his job as President." This week, 42% approved and 52% disapproved. As per the hunch of Gallup’s Frank Newport, Bush held 80% approval among Republicans on the CBS survey – exactly the same level measured a week ago.
Zogby showed Bush’s overall rating hitting "an all time low" of 41% excellent or good, 59% fair or poor, but Zogby has not polled on Bush’s job rating since July. The CBS survey showed a similar decline over the summer, from 45% in July to 41% last week.
Where the President has taken a serious hit on the CBS poll (though not necessarily just in the last week) is in perceptions of him as a strong leader and crisis manager. Right now, roughly half of Americans (48%) agree that Bush "has strong qualities of leadership," down from 64% a year ago. Right now only 32% express "a lot" of confidence in George W. Bush’s ability to handle a crisis (19% express "some" confidence). In the weeks after 9/11, 66% had a lot of confidence in Bush, 24% some. Note that these were the second and third questions on the CBS survey, asked before any mention of Hurricane Katrina. Much more in the CBS analysis. Read it all.
“As per the hunch of Gallup’s Frank Newport, Bush held 80% approval among Republicans on the CBS survey”
So the WH strategy has got to be to hold together their god given 41% of the electorate, count on them turning out in ’06, and count on the clumping distribution of Democrats in the House and Senate to survive the ’06 elections with a minority of the vote.
Dunno if it’ll work, but it’s not a bad strategy.
I wouldn’t read too much into this for ’06. I’m a Republican who would have said that Bush did a poor job, but I’d still vote GOP in ’06. I suspect that most Republicans would stay within the fold, even though they may be disappointed in the response.
Re Keith’s remark, the key question for 2006 would be not Republican voterss voting against Republican candidates, but rather Republican voters not voting at all.
I agree it is far too early to draw conclusions, but turnout is likely to be the key: Do Republicans still feel good enough about their party and president to bother going out and voting in the midterm election?
“Re Keith’s remark, the key question for 2006 would be not Republican voterss voting against Republican candidates, but rather Republican voters not voting at all.”
Exactly. If folks like Keith turnout in 2006, the GOP has a decent shot at surviving even if they’re only 43% of the voting age population.
The problem for the GOP really comes if the Bush bloc is just too fed up to bother voting, even if they haven’t explicitly turned against him.