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George W. Bush a popular president buoyed by a strong 59 percent
job-approval rating — or is he a struggling chief executive troubled
by the fact that 51 percent of the public disapproves of
the job he is doing?
One could draw
both conclusions from two recent polls on Bush's job performance
— the Washington Post/ABC News survey that gave the president
a 59-38 job-approval rating, and the John Zogby poll that gave Bush
a 51-47 negative job-approval score.
There are differences
in the polls' methodologies. Zogby surveyed likely voters only;
the Post and ABC polled randomly selected adults. The Post
asked a very simple question — "Do you approve or disapprove
of the way George W. Bush is handling his job as president?"
— and asked respondents for a simple Approve/Disapprove answer.
Zogby asked, "Overall, how would you rate President George
W. Bush's performance in office?" and gave respondents the
choice of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor. The Excellent and Good
answers were totaled to give the job-approval rating, and the Fair
and Poor answers were totaled to give the job-disapproval rating.
Zogby's poll
showed a clear erosion in the president's standing. Compared to
a similar survey a month earlier, the poll suggested that a significant
number of respondents who were once likely to give the president
a Good rating had changed their minds to give him a Fair rating.
"There is an increasing lukewarmness there," Zogby told
NRO of popular opinion of the president. "This is the way slides
usually take place."
The Post/ABC
poll, on the other hand, seemed like clear good news for the White
House; 59 percent is a good job-approval rating. While the president's
defenders were quick to cite the poll as proof of his popularity,
there appear to be some who do not have a great deal of confidence
in its results — most notably, the Washington Post and ABC
News.
Despite its
sponsorship of the poll, ABC did not air the results on either its
morning or its evening newscasts. The Post's handling of
the story was more complex. In a front-page piece last week, reporters
Dan Balz and David Broder first noted the president's strong personal
approval rating — 63 percent — but added that Bush was "facing
broad public doubts about his overall agenda and key policies."
Balz and Broder noted the 59 percent job-approval rating in their
second paragraph, and continued: "But only half of those interviewed
believe he is succeeding in his goal of bringing 'needed change
to Washington,' and more people than not say his priorities are
wrong." The rest of the article continued in a similar vein.
On Sunday,
Balz and Broder elaborated on the poll's results, adding information
gathered from interviews in Iowa, New Hampshire, Illinois, and Pennsylvania.
Again, they focused on Bush's personal popularity and his political
vulnerability. "What emerged," from the interviews, Balz
and Broder wrote, "is a president with a political profile
that is the mirror image of his predecessor's. Voters did not trust
Bill Clinton but backed his policy agenda and believed he shared
their concerns. Bush enjoys the respect and admiration of the public,
but he receives far less support for his political agenda while
facing doubts that he understands their concerns. That profile was
enough to win the election last year — by one of the narrowest margins
in U.S. history. Whether it can sustain his presidency is questionable."
It's hard to
avoid the conclusion that both the Post and ABC do not quite
believe their own poll's showing of strong job approval for Bush.
ABC's statement — not airing the results — could not have been clearer.
But the Post's concerns seemed obvious as well, especially
when one compares, as Balz and Broder did, its poll on Bush with
earlier surveys on the popularity of Bill Clinton.
In October,
1997, before the Lewinsky scandal began to turn Clinton polls upside
down, Post poll expert Richard Morin, in a front-page write-up
of another of the paper's polls, wrote of Clinton, "Despite
new rounds of disclosures about White House fund-raising, the president
remains popular with Americans. Clinton's latest job approval rating
stood at 59 percent." A year earlier, Morin and Balz wrote
that yet another Post poll "suggests Clinton benefits
from a strong economy and continued public satisfaction with the
job he is doing as president. Fifty-six percent of those interviewed
expressed approval of the way that he is handling the economy and
57 percent said they approved of the president's overall job performance."
That was then.
Now, however, a 59 percent job-approval rating for George W. Bush
is just part of a larger picture which gives the president much
cause for concern. What's going on here?
Questions of
bias aside, it could be that the Post's poll is simply not
a very accurate picture of Bush's support as the president begins
his August vacation. Judging the president's job performance by
a simple Approve/Disapprove question is like giving him a Pass/Fail
grade. The grade inevitably lumps together disparate opinions under
just two categories. Thus, it seems likely that Bush's 59 percent
approval rating includes a lot of soft support — support from the
kind of people who gave the president a "Fair" rating
in Zogby's poll. Therefore, the Post's Approve/Disapprove
question caught none of the complexity of opinion about Bush (or
any other president for that matter). To make up for that, Balz
and Broder devoted a lot of attention to supplemental questions
— Bush's support on the economy, the environment, energy, etc. —
to give their reporting some of the nuance that the Approve/Disapprove
question missed.
Which means
that the president's supporters should probably not take too much
comfort in the Post poll. They may disagree with whether
Zogby's "Fair" category should be counted as approval
or disapproval, but it may yield a more accurate picture of Bush's
support than other, more optimistic, polls.
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