The Daily Background

According to the latest Newsweek/Princeton Survey Research Associates International poll, President Bush has hit a new net (dis)approval level.

but the state of the Bush administration is at its worst yet, according to the latest NEWSWEEK poll. The president’s approval ratings are at their lowest point in the poll’s history—30 percent—and more than half the country (58 percent) say they wish the Bush presidency were simply over, a sentiment that is almost unanimous among Democrats (86 percent), and is shared by a clear majority (59 percent) of independents and even one in five (21 percent) Republicans.

Probably more interestingly, we apparently have a drastically different view than we did three years ago of the way the President will be remembered in history:

With Bush widely viewed as an ineffectual “lame duck” (by 71 percent of all Americans), over half (53 percent) of the poll’s respondents now say they believe history will see him as a below-average president, up three points from last May. The first time this question was asked, in October 2003, as many people thought Bush would go down in history as an above average president as thought we would be regarded as below average (29 to 26 percent). Only 22 percent of those polled think Bush’s decisions about Iraq and other major policy are influenced mainly by the facts; 67 percent say the president’s decisions are influenced more by his personal beliefs.

This comes in the wake of a January 22nd CBS/CBS poll which indicated President Bush had fallen to a 28% approval level; the lowest that they had ever recorded him at.

By the way, according to an Associated Press/Ipsos poll released earlier this month, a slim majority of Americans (51%) are in favor of gay marriage (45% opposed). Obviously, this means that the President is considerably less popular than gay marriage.

Filed under: Polls, Z-TDB Blog