Tuesday, May 23rd, 2006
Gallup-ing to new lows
As several of my fellow liberals (along with Media Matters For America) have pointed out, President Bush’s poll numbers for the first trimester of his second term are not good - 45% according to a recent Gallup poll (the same Gallup that oversamples Republicans). I have produced a copy of the polling data presented by Media Matters below in order to point out a caveat with the data:
| President | Approval rating | Date of poll |
| Truman | 57% | March 6-11, 1949 |
| Eisenhower | 65% | March 15-20, 1957 |
| Johnson | 69% | March 18-23, 1965 |
| Nixon | 57% | March 30-April 2, 1973 |
| Reagan | 56% | March 8-11, 1985 |
| Clinton | 59% | March 24-26, 1997 |
| Bush | 45% | March 21-23, 2005 |
The caveat is this: President Johnson ascended to the presidency in the wake of the assassination of JFK in 1963, so technically, he would’ve been in his first elected term as president. This makes him an outlier in the data. But even compensating for that, you have to admit that the evidence is pretty damning.
(See original post on the old blog here - originally posted Apr. 7, 2005 1:41 PM)
