The Daily Background

Although it feels like the President has been running around making speeches every other day last week, brand new poll numbers show bad news for the President. Read on for more.

Instead of bouncing up from the low forties into perhaps a mid 40s approval rating (does rove dare to hope they could bounce higher?), a new CNN/USA Today Gallup showed that there is in fact- absolutely no change in the President’s approval rating. None.

In fact, nationwide approval of Bush’s handling of Iraq actually went down from the previous week! A larger percentage of the population also believed that going to war in Iraq was a mistake (finally over the 50% line), and, as the new poll shows, only 40% of Americans believe that the Unite States is “winning” the war in Iraq. On the homefront, economic approval ratings are also not good for the current Administration.

Reaffirming the stance of top Democrats last week, the poll shows:

Nearly two-thirds said they are not willing to sacrifice civil liberties to prevent terrorism, as compared to 49 percent saying so in 2002.

So… it turns out that all of Bush’s speeches didn’t do much of anything after all. Or– even worse for him, it’s possible that his speeches did actually do something, they may have served to just barely shore up support for the administration.

Either way, it’s good news. As a midterm election year is set to begin in 2006, it’s looking like Democrats may finally regain control of the House and Senate.

Filed under: Z-TDB Blog