A very busy end-of-week left me with only enough time to note the latest Diageo/Hotline poll which was released on Thursday (press release, results, presentation) that helps bring us up to on recent MP posts on outliers and Hillary Clinton’s ratings among Democrats.
This most recent Diageo/Hotline poll puts George Bush’s job rating at 4644% approve and 5355% disapprove. Regular MP readers will remember that the last Diageo/Hotline poll, released in mid-December, appeared to be a bit of an outlier in terms of the Bush job rating (50% approve, 41% disapprove – though results on other questions were generally in line with other surveys). This latest result looks like a classic example of regression to the mean, as other have generally shown no significant trend over the last month. Note also that the Hotline samples registered voters (rather than adults) which may explain why it typically gets a slightly higher Bush job rating than other surveys.
Though not included in the presentation online, pollster Ed Reilly noted in a poll briefing on Thursday that the percentage of Democrats giving Hillary Clinton’s unfavorable rating has been increasing in recent months, from 11% in October to 19% on this most recent survey. Her favorable percentage among Democrats remains high (at 75%) but that has also fallen slightly in the last month (from 79%).
The Hotline‘s polling editor Aoife McCarthy also posts to On-Call about the 2006 presidential vote trial heats on this survey matching up Hillary Clinton and John McCain against each other and against “generic” candidates from each party.
Finally, the survey takes an in-depth look at the Abramoff scandal and perceptions of corruption in government. One fascinating slide from the poll presentation shows that registered voters divided evenly on whether the terms honest, ethical or immoral applied better to the Democratic Party or the Republican party, with slight pluralities saying the terms apply to both equally. However, when asked about “corruption,” twice as many say Republicans are corrupt (24%) than Democrats (12%), but far more say both are corrupt and only 5% were unsure.
A casual glance at polling since Jan 1 suggests Bush is where he always is: low 40’s. It’s a good baseline for those who want to follow the temporary bump from SOTU. But he at the moment has no momentum either way.
Interstingly, Fox at 42 also looks at RV, hiwith the different methodology Rasmussen at 45%. Rasmussen measures like/dislike categories, and the disapprove stongly to Bush remain a solid 38% compared to approve strongly 22% fwiw.
It continues to be a source of bemusement to me how the media uses the outliers to declare trends that don’t exist. This is not a self-correcting thing, because the impression is rarely corrected with new data. Bush remains polarizing, and arguably unpopular.
But as Carl Cannon suggests in National Journal, is it Bush or us that’s the source of polarization? How would polling help answer that question?
Oh, and ARG is at 36%