Bush's Gallup numbers collapse; Lieberman too

I'm back! Actually not really. I'm haunting DC for the rest of the day, but I found a Starbucks and their all-important Internet hot spot.

So it was with great joy that I logged in and found this:

A thin majority, 52%, approve of the overall job [Bush] is doing, down from this year's high of 71% in mid-April, when the war in Iraq still had a glow of victory.

It's even further from his 90% job approval rating in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Bush gets his lowest marks on the economy; fewer than half approve of his stewardship. The president got further bad news Thursday with a report that claims for unemployment benefits increased last week [...]

Bush's slippage suggests that if the election were held today, he would be in a tough fight. Among registered voters, he holds a slim 4-percentage point lead over an unnamed Democrat. He had a double-digit lead two weeks ago [...]

On Iraq, where the news has been dominated by continued attacks on U.S. troops, 51% approve of Bush's management. Public satisfaction with the way things are going there has fallen below 50% for the first time, to 47%.

Ouch ouch ouch. That's a 7-point drop in just a matter of two weeks. And Gallup has, alongside ABC News, given Bush his highest ratings, usually about 10-points higher than the polls at the bottom range of results. If those trends hold (and there's no reason they shouldn't), we should be seeing more polls like Zogby's with Bush's numbers in the 40s.

The poll internals can be found here.

The poll also tackles the Dem field, giving Lieberman horrid news. It also polls with and without Clark:

Without Clark (Late August results in parenthesis)
Gephardt 17 (13)
Dean 15 (12)
No Opinion 15 (12)
Lieberman 13 (23)
Kerry 13 (10)
Graham 6 (4)
Braun 5 (5)
Edwards 5 (5)
Sharpton 3 (4)
Kucinich 2 (1)

With Clark
Gephardt 15
No Opinion 14
Dean 13
Lieberman 12
Kerry 11
Clark 9
Braun 5
Graham 5
Edwards 5
Sharpton 3
Kucinich 2

Lieberman's 10-point drop, after a five-point gain two weeks ago, makes me think his strong showing in the previous Gallup poll was a fluke. Either that or his Dean vendetta is killing him -- there's been nothing else these past two weeks to justify a 10-point drop.

As for Clark, he seems to pull evenly from all the top candidates. No one seems especially impacted (at least not initially).

Posted September 12, 2003 10:40 AM | Comments (243)