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the last two days, Republicans have been dismissing a new poll showing
George W. Bush's job-performance-approval rating slipping below
50 percent. "I would relax on this," Republican National Committee
chairman Jim Gilmore said Tuesday on CNN, suggesting that people
should not "live and die day-by-day and hour-by-hour by these polls."
But a close look at the new survey, by pollster John Zogby, reveals
evidence of a gradual erosion in Bush's position that might spell
trouble for the president in the long run.
In the poll, conducted in the last week of July, 47 percent of those
surveyed gave Bush a positive job rating, while 51 percent gave
him a negative rating. That's a shift from another Zogby survey
in late June, when 51 percent gave Bush a positive job rating, and
48 percent gave him a negative rating.
Some critics have questioned the way Zogby categorizes the answers
to the basic question, "Overall, how would you rate President George
W. Bush's performance in office?" Respondents are given four possible
answers: Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor. The number of "excellent"
and "good" responses are counted as positive job-approval ratings,
while the "fair" and "poor" responses are counted as negative. Criticism
of the survey has centered on whether respondents who give Bush
a "fair" are actually giving him a negative job-approval rating.
"This is the scale I've always used," says Zogby. "The theory is,
you're not going to go very far with a 'fair' rating. You don't
have a bully pulpit when you've got a large number of people saying
you're doing just 'fair.'" (Zogby adds that, using the "fair/poor"
standard, his polls taken during the Lewinsky scandal found Bill
Clinton's job-approval ratings to be consistently lower than the
sky-high numbers found in other polls. "Republicans loved it when
it was Clinton," Zogby says.)
A comparison of voters' responses to Zogby in late June and then
in late July indicates that Bush's approval rating is indeed slipping.
In the late June survey, this was the breakdown on the job-approval
question (the numbers do not total 100 because a small number of
respondents said they could not answer):
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Excellent
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15.6
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Good
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35.0
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Fair
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27.4
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Poor
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20.7
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These
are the results from the poll in late July:
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Excellent
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17.2
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Good
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30.0
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Fair
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33.6
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Poor
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17.3
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On
both ends of the scale, a slightly different number of people rated
Bush "excellent" and "poor" in late July than in June. Both numbers
are within the poll's margin of error. But the most significant
shift seems to be a slippage in the number of people who gave Bush
"good" ratings. In June, it was 35 percent; in July it was 30 percent.
That was accompanied by a corresponding increase in the number of
people who gave Bush a "fair" rating. "This is the way slides usually
take place," says Zogby. "There is an increasing lukewarmness there."
During that time, there were no major events to push Bush's ratings
one way or the other; just a slow downward movement.
Just
as worrisome for the president's political team, Zogby points out
that Bush's approval numbers remain mediocre among the groups he
needs to help him govern most effectively: independents, suburban
voters, parents, and moderates. "The very groups he needs to build
a majority are the ones giving him some of the poorest ratings,"
Zogby says.
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