April 11, 2008
By Charles Franklin
President Bush's approval trend has taken a sharp downturn in recent weeks, to fall to a new low for the administration at 28.3%. This follows a lengthy period of stable approval at around 32-33%.
Recent polls from Gallup and AP/Ipsos put approval at 28%, a new low for the Gallup poll. Harris recently found approval at 26% while CBS News put approval at 28%. Pew similarly has approval at 28%, though the Diageo/Hotline result for registered voters (as opposed to adults in the other polls) has approval at 35%, the only recent poll over 30%.
While the President has taken a back seat to the primaries in recent months, his new approval slump reflects growing pessimism over the economy which has displaced the war in Iraq as the most important problem facing the country. Likewise the percent saying the nation is headed in the wrong direction has continued to grow in recent months, to a high of 81% in a recent CBS News poll.
Cross posted at Political Arithmetik
By Charles Franklin on April 11, 2008 12:15 PM
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December 12, 2007
By Charles Franklin
President Bush's approval rating remains about where it has been for several months: 33% plus or minus a fraction. The current trend estimate is 33.2%, including December polling from LATimes/Bloomberg, AP/Ipsos, CBS/NYT, ABC/WP and USAToday/Gallup, the last from 12/6-9/07, finding 37% approve and 58% disapprove.
This now represents one of the longest periods of stable approval for Bush. His presidency has been characterized by a long decline from the post 9/11 highs, interrupted by generally short rallies and spikes due to the start of the Iraq war and the capture of Saddam Hussein. The most important exception has been the long rise in approval starting in March 2004 and continuing through the election in November of that year. The second term has been marked more by long term decline, but with rallies up in late 2005 and the late spring and summer of 2006. Rarely has support simply held stable, neither rising nor falling.
The only period of nearly comparable length was the winter and early spring of 2007, when approval held at a steady 34% for nearly 4 months.
The current plateau at around 33% has now lasted slightly longer, starting a rise in late July and stabilizing around 33% by September. Since that time, trend estimates have varied within less than a percentage point of 33%.
The current polling shows considerable variation, from a low of 28% in CBS/NYT to a high of 37% in the latest Gallup poll (both taken within a week of each other.) The CBS/NYT just barely crosses over into outlier territory in the residuals plot below. Even with these two extremes removed, the remaining polls also balance around 33%.
The final plot below shows that the sensitive "red" estimator is in agreement with the more conservative "blue" standard trend estimate. Neither see much change in recent polls.
If you want dynamic exciting polling, better turn to the primary races.
Cross-posted at Political Arithmetik.
By Charles Franklin on December 12, 2007 3:51 PM
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October 30, 2007
By Charles Franklin
There have been several polls since my last update, and they have varied much more than usual. But the bottom line, with all the data, is a small decline in the trend estimate, and that well within the uncertainty of the trend.
The newly added polls are:
Fox: 10/23-24/07, Approve 35%, Disapprove 55%
LATimes/Bloomberg: 10/19-22/07, Approve 35%, Disapprove 60%
ARG: 10/18-21/07, Approve 25%, Disapprove 67%
CBS News: 10/12-16/07, Approve: 30, Disapprove 61%
CNN/ORC: 10/12-14/07, Approve 36%, Disapprove 61%
Zogby/Reuters: 10/10-14/07, Approve 25%, Disapprove 75%
That is quite a range from two at 25% to a top of 36%. Zogby and ARG are well below the trend estimate, while the two at 35% and one at 36% are only a bit above trend. (An older NPR poll at 38% is well above expectations, but as I explained in an earlier post this has something to do with the likely voter sample NPR favors, compared to the adult samples of most approval polls.)
If we look at the residuals, NPR looks like a high outlier and Harris a low one. But Zogby/Reuters and ARG are even more extreme low outliers. Zogby uses the same 4 point job rating measure that Harris uses, so that partially explains their low value (a persistent question wording effect) but as the plot makes clear, the Zogby reading is even lower than we'd expect from that. The ARG reading is also extremely low, at the same 25% approval rating, and the points and labels are overwritten by each other.
The curiosity is why two (three with Harris) outliers? Did opinion change and these caught it early? Apparently not, judging by other recent polls that are at or even a bit higher than the trend estimate of 32.6%.
In general I think it is a bad idea to seek a substantive explanation for outliers. The most reasonable story is simply "random variation" and we should leave it at that. There ARE some systematic elements, such as the question wording variation or sampling issues I pointed out, but I'm not inclined to say more. To do so becomes a post hoc search for what are most likely statistical phantoms. (Though when history keeps repeating itself we might look into house effects for a systematic effect, possibly due to question wording, sampling, or treatment of don't know responses.)
The bottom line is approval may have shifted down a tad, from 33.0% to 32.6%. BUT, one should consider the gray region around the trend line below. This gives you a good idea of the uncertainty in the trend estimate itself, after squeezing out as much random variation in the polls as possible (at least until next week! Stay tuned for that!). Clearly the change of .4 percentage points is not a clear indication of movement in approval. In fact, given the wide range of current polling, we have an unusually wide uncertainty about where approval actually is at the moment, with 32.6% being our best estimate, but an uncertain one.
We are in a period of relative stability in President Bush's approval rating but considerable polling variation. Waiting for the next "thing" to happen.
Cross-posted at Political Arithmetik.
By Charles Franklin on October 30, 2007 7:20 PM
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October 16, 2007
By Charles Franklin
President Bush's approval trend has been relatively flat in recent weeks. For the last month the estimated approval has held between 32% and 33% and currently stands at 33.0%, which includes Gallup's 32% approval from polling done 10/12-14/07.
There was a fairly sharp upturn that started in July, which has tapered off but not yet disappeared. Poll to poll fluctuations have pulled the trend estimate around a bit in the 32%-33% range but without clear evidence of significant change.
The last six polls also demonstrate some persistent differences between polls. The NPR Poll, conducted by Public Opinion Strategies (R) and Greenberg Quinlan Rosner (D) has a persistent positive house effect, making NPR one of the higher measures of Bush approval. In the opposite direction, Harris has a persistently negative reading of approval. In the figure below, we see that both are outliers in the current approval trend.
But this is a good example of when being an "outlier" doesn't necessarily mean anything is wrong with the polling. NPR samples "likely voters" and we know from other analysis that samples of likely voters are generally more approving of President Bush. Likewise, Harris (along with Zogby) uses a four point approval scale, "Excellent", "Good", "Fair" and "Poor" while everyone else uses "Approve" or "Disapprove". Harris and Zogby (and me) arbitrarily map "excellent" and "good" into "approve", and "fair" and "poor" into "disapprove". But is that the right way to make different answers comparable? Do the first two of these choices mean exactly what "approve" means? No. This is just the best categorization possible for mapping these four response options into two. And one consequence is that Harris and Zogby tend to come in below the estimated trend.
The choices these polling organizations make to sample likely voters rather than adults, or to use a four choice approval measure, are not in any sense "wrong" decisions. But they do mean that the results these pollsters get will be somewhat different from what others, using different samples and different questions, will find. But the choices DO make these polls more likely to be "far" away from the trend which is based on all pollsters.
So why call them outliers? Simply because they are, in fact, well away from the trend and the distribution of everyone else. In some cases that might indicate a "bad" poll, a sample that for some reason is far from what we would normally expect, or perhaps a biased question wording or sequence of questions. But being an outlier can also result from making choices of sample or question or other procedures which are different from most. Different yes, not necessarily bad.
But different is surprising, nonetheless. My goal here is to put everyone's polling in perspective, and these two do deserve to be labeled "outliers" because they are in fact different. A normal reader of polls without benefit of the perspective we provide here, would reasonably ask how can NPR get Bush at 38% and Harris have him at 27% (and the trend estimator be at 33%?) That surprise factor is also part of what being an outlier means. Without some further explanation (sample, question wording) the results appear puzzling. An outlier may be understandable or explicable, as both of these appear to be. Or in may not. Either way outlier detection draws attention and asks for an explanation or a discounting of the finding.
Cross-posted at Political Arithmetik.
By Charles Franklin on October 16, 2007 7:12 PM
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September 14, 2007
By Charles Franklin
A very busy week for pollsters with four new polls today. CNN/ORC was conducted 9/7-9/07, finding 36% approval of President Bush's job performance while 61% disapprove. Harris, done 9/7-10/07 gets 31% approval, 67% disapproval, while AP/Ipsos from 9/10-12/07 puts approval at 33% and disapproval at 64%. The latest is the Fox poll taken 9/11-12/07 which finds approval at 37% and disapproval at 58%.
The addition of these four polls raises the trend estimate of approval to 33.3%. This is the first time since May 9 that approval has reached the one-third point.
The new polls are nicely balanced around the current estimate: Fox and CNN are about as far above the trend as Harris and AP are below it. You can get a sense of the house effects of each of these pollsters from the chart below.
The balance of polls above and below trend is also evident in the residuals plot below. No recent poll is close to being an outlier. All of the last 10 polls lie within the normal range of sampling variation.
With President Bush scheduled to address the nation tonight about Iraq policy it will be very interesting to see if the current upturn in approval is sustained. The testimony by General Petraeus and the President's speech could (I stress could) convince some citizens to give the Iraq policy more time, or could push in the opposite direction among those who were hopeful of a faster reduction in forces. (Note I'm talking about those still on the fence enough about Iraq to be affected either way. Obviously a lot of people have long since made up their minds in either direction and are unlikely to be affected by the testimony or the speech.)
Cross posted at Political Arithmetik.
By Charles Franklin on September 14, 2007 4:10 PM
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August 31, 2007
By Charles Franklin
There have been three new polls since my last update of approval of President Bush. The USA Today/Gallup poll done 8/13-16/07 found approval at 32%, disapproval at 63%. A Pew Research poll taken 8/1-18/07 got approval at 31%, disapproval at 59%, and the Fox News poll done 8/21-22/07 put approval at 33%, disapproval at 56%.
With these three polls, the trend estimate is 32.6%, a small continued gain over the previous batch of polling.
The plot below shows the six most recent polls in relation to the trend estimate.
None of the recent polls qualify as outliers, with all comfortably within the 95% confidence interval.
Cross-posted at Political Arithmetik.
By Charles Franklin on August 31, 2007 9:42 PM
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August 20, 2007
By Charles Franklin
I've been off-line the past week, recovering from vacation. But the polls haven't stopped, and I'm now back to work as well.
We saw five new polls last week on approval of President Bush. A CNN/ORC poll taken 8/6-8/07 found approval at 36%, disapproval at 61%. The Associated Press/Ipsos poll also on 8/6-8/07 has approval at 35%, disapproval at 62%. The Reuters/Zogby poll done 8/9-11/07 got approval at 32%, disapproval at 67%. The CBS News poll done 8/8-12/07 put approval at 29%, disapproval at 65% and the Quinnipiac University survey of 8/7-13/07 finds approval at 29% and disapproval at 64%.
With these new polls the trend estimate of approval now stands at 32.4%. At the moment none of the last 10 polls qualify as outliers, with some above and some below the trend estimate but none further away than we would expect given the variability in polling. It remains to be seen whether the current upturn in approval that began after June 28 is continuing up. The Quinnipiac and CBS results at 29% are more than 3 points below trend, but not abnormally so and both polls typically run a bit below trend, so they don't give much evidence of a new downturn. Let's get some more data to answer that question.
Cross-posted at Political Arithmetik.
By Charles Franklin on August 20, 2007 7:31 PM
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August 5, 2007
By Charles Franklin
It has been a busy week for presidential approval polls. Newsweek is the latest to report. Their survey taken 8/1/07 finds approval at 29% and disapproval at 63%. This is Newsweek's second consecutive poll at 29%, but up from the two previous Newsweek polls both at 26%.
With the new data the approval trend estimate stands at 30.7%.
None of the diagnostics change significantly since the previous approval updates this week here and here, which offer more discussion of recent trends and the timing of the recent upturn in approval.
Cross-posted at Political Arithmetik.
By Charles Franklin on August 5, 2007 6:38 PM
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August 3, 2007
By Charles Franklin
A new Greenberg Quinlan Rosner/Democracy Corps poll, taken 7/25-29/07 finds approval of President Bush at 36%, with disapproval at 60%. The new Pew Center poll, also taken 7/25-29/07 puts approval at 29%, disapproval at 61%.
With these two new polls the trend estimate of approval now stands at 30.8%.
The GQR/Democracy Corps poll is a statistical outlier, falling above the 95% confidence interval around the approval trend. At the moment we have two outliers-- ARG's 25% is below the confidence interval.
GQR/Democracy Corps polls are of likely voters, rather than adults as with most polls here. As a result, they consistently estimate approval levels higher than for the adult population and hence above the trend line as well. This is clear from the plot below showing "Greenberg" surveys tracking high. This is a "design decision" to survey likely voters, and should not be considered a defect in the poll. Inferences are to a different population from that of the general population.
The "house effect" estimate for GQR/Democracy Corps surveys is just below 3 percentage points, with a confidence interval from just under 2 to just under 4 points. Despite this substantial house effect, GQR surveys have only rarely exceeded the confidence interval for presidential approval.
As the number of recent polls has increased, the standard "blue line" estimator of support has increased it's "bend" and is coming closer to the more sensitive "red line" estimator, further evidence that approval trends changed direction around June 28, when the red estimator put approval at 28.7%. Currently the blue estimator agrees with that date as the turning point, though the estimate will continue to change until enough data are available for a stable estimate of the turning point.
While the change in support is now pretty clear, the reasons are less so. The timing coincides with a series of Supreme Court decisions, all carried by the majority created with Bush's appointments of Roberts and Alito. I don't think the Court is salient enough with the general population to be a strong driver of public opinion, especially of presidential approval. However, it is possible that the most politically involved conservatives were both aware of the decisions and gave Bush credit for his appointments, helping arrest his decline in the polls.
The other event about this time was the commutation of Scooter Libby's prison sentence on July 2. Initial reaction among the general population and even many self-described conservatives was disapproving of this decision. But here too the effect may have been positive among conservative Republicans and served to shore up support among that constituency.
But that said, unlike previous sharp turning points that have corresponded to major presidential speeches, this one is harder to account for with "obvious" actions of the President (or of Congress, for that matter.) I invite your speculation on this.
Cross-posted at Political Arithmetik.
By Charles Franklin on August 3, 2007 7:49 PM
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August 2, 2007
By Charles Franklin
New polls from Hotline and NBC/WSJ continue to raise the trend estimate for approval of President Bush, taking the estimate above 30% for the first time in a while.
Hotline, taken 7/19-22/07 has approval at 33%, disapproval at 63%. The NBC/Wall Street Journal poll done 7/27-30/07 has approval at 31 and disapproval at 63%.
With these new data, the approval trend now stands at 30.2%. This is in keeping with the upturn in approval first noted here, and confirmed by recent polls. Of course, 30.2% is nothing to brag about, but it is a tad better than being in the 20s.
The exact timing of the change remains unclear from my standard estimator, but the more sensitive "red" estimator thinks the turn was sharp and the rise has been substantial. Remember, "red" is often fooled by a few polls, so retain some skepticism about the red estimator, but we've got enough recent polls to make me pretty confident "red" has the story right, if not the exact timing or extent of the rise.
With the new trend estimate, the ARG poll at 25% has now moved clearly into outlier territory. This is a good example of how determining what is or is not an outlier can shift as more complete data arrive.
Cross-posted at Political Arithmetik.
By Charles Franklin on August 2, 2007 8:24 PM
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July 25, 2007
By Mark Blumenthal
This morning, The
Washington Post's Peter Baker takes a closer
look at why President Bush, with a disapproval rating of 65% on the latest
Post/ABC survey, "is in the running for most unpopular president in the history
of modern polling." While poll junkies ought to read the whole thing, this
bit of historical context from pollster Patrick Caddell is especially
intriguing:
"It's astonishing," said
Pat Caddell, who was President Jimmy Carter's pollster. "It's hard to look
at the situation today and say the country is absolutely 15 miles down in the
hole. The economy's not that bad -- for some people it is, but not overall. Iraq is terribly handled, but it's not Vietnam; we're
not losing 250 people a week. . . . We don't have that immediate crisis, yet
the anxiety about the future is palpable. And the feeling about him is he's
irrelevant to that. I think they've basically given up on him."
Baker goes on to float the theory that "the changing nature
of society," and in particular of the way Americans receive their news, is
partly responsible for the difference:
"A lot of the commentary that
comes out of the Internet world is very harsh," said Frank J. Donatelli,
White House political director for Ronald Reagan. "That has a tendency to
reinforce people's opinions and harden people's opinions."
Hmm. Thoughts anyone?
Update: TNR's Jon Chait has more thoughts, as does Open Left's Chris Bowers.
By Mark Blumenthal on July 25, 2007 3:34 PM
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July 24, 2007
By Charles Franklin
New polls have moved noticeably above President Bush's recent low point of approval, though the current trend estimate remains below 30%. New polls have generally fallen at 30% approval and above, though one is as low as 25%. This change of trend was first discussed about a week ago here. Since then, the evidence for a shift in trend has mounted.
The ARG poll, taken 7/18-21/07, sets the low point at 25% approval, 71% disapproval. Gallup, done 7/12-15/07 got approval at 31%, disapproval at 63%. CBS/New York Times has two recent results: 7/9-17/07 has approval at 29%, disapproval at 64%, while the newest CBS/NYT poll of 7/20-22/07 puts approval at 30%, disapproval at 62%. Fox, 7/17-18/07 has approval at 32%, disapproval at 61%, while ABC/Washington Post 7/18-21/07 estimates approval at 33% and disapproval at 65%. So that puts four of the last six polls above 30% with only one in the mid-20s, where polling in late June was falling.
The trend estimate now stands at 29.6%, and the slope of the trend has clearly begun to bend from a steep downward trend to a less negative one. This is classic behavior of my standard "old blue" estimator. It takes a while to change direction, and while it does it slowly bends until it shifts direction entirely. In contrast, the "ready red" estimator is more sensitive and picks up on direction changes more quickly. The red line in the figure above shows a sharp change at just under 29% to a current estimate of just under 31% approval. The red line is often too sensitive, mistaking short term random noise for real change. However, we've now accumulated enough supporting polls to make me more confident that the upturn in the red estimator is probably real. At the same time, this does not mean the trend will remain as sharply up as the red estimator seems to suggest. That won't be known for a while yet, as more polls help define what the path of the next month or so is.
Recent polls have fallen above and below the trend estimate, and at the moment none of the last 10 polls constitutes an outlier, though there are both high and low polls rather close to the confidence interval limits. This range of results is also reflected in the very wide gray area at the end of the trend in the Bootstrap plot below. The wide gray area reflects our uncertainty about where approval is right now in a time of change in direction.
Finally, the last plot below shows the most recent 20 estimates of approval. The red dots trace out the clear decline, low point, and move back upwards in the "old blue" estimator. So even that estimator is feeling a change.
Cross-posted at Political Arithmetik.
By Charles Franklin on July 24, 2007 10:06 PM
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July 19, 2007
By Charles Franklin
Two new polls find higher approval ratings of President Bush than last week, and both polls are above trend, lending more support for the suggestion I made here last week that we may be seeing a leveling off of the recent decline in Bush approval.
Gallup's new poll, taken 7/12-15/07 found approval at 31%, disapproval at 63%. A Zogby/Reuter's poll conducted 7/12-14/07 has approval at 34%, disapproval at 66%.
With the addition of these polls, the trend estimator is now 29.1%. More importantly the evidence of a change in trend, while still not conclusive, is beginning to be visible even with the standard, stable blue line estimate. The blue trend estimate now shows just a bit of a bend in recent estimates-- what had been declining at a constant rate since April now suggests a change. The more sensitive, but easily confused, red estimator has clearly taken an upward tick. While red is often fooled, and we should not be justified in claiming clear evidence for a turnaround, the indications are now in that direction for the first time in four months.
With only the latest four polls showing this move up, we should be cautious. Usually it takes about 12 consistent polls to be confident of a change in trend. But if we are reading early tea leaves, they suggest that the President's recent precipitous decline may be stabilizing.
Cross-posted at Political Arithmetik.
By Charles Franklin on July 19, 2007 2:40 PM
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July 16, 2007
By Charles Franklin
Two new polls at the end of last week find approval of President Bush a bit above recent trend estimates. The Associated Press poll, taken 7/9-11/07, found approval at 33% with disapproval at 65%. A Newsweek poll taken 7/11-12/07 got approval at 29%, disapproval at 64%. Prior to these polls the trend estimate was 27.2%. With the two added, the trend estimate now stands at 28.0%.
This is the first time we've seen a pair of polls above trend in a while. Balance above and below trend has been the recent rule. For AP, this is a 1 point gain from their early June poll, while for Newsweek it is a 3 point gain over the previous week. Neither would qualify as a statistically significant change.
I'm normally quite cautious about suggesting a change of trend based on only two polls. That caution is especially important here because the AP result at 33% is right on the margin of the 95% confidence interval, as close to an outlier as you can get. Indeed, without the Newsweek poll, AP would be a bit outside the 95% confidence interval.
But tossing caution to the wind for a moment, it wouldn't be a surprise if the President's sharp decline is due for some leveling out. Approval was stable from December through April, starting down around April 24th. Since then it has been sinking at a nearly constant rate for over two months. This has brought the trend in approval solidly into the 20s for the last 10 polls, not a simple "blip" down. But to sustain approval this low requires Republican support for Bush sinking below 60% or Independents sinking to the mid-teens. Democrats are already below 10%, so can't contribute much to further decline.
Recent polls from Newsweek, CBS and Gallup have found Republican approval between 60% and 68%. Independents have ranged from 18% to 26%, and Democrats from 7% to 10%. Gallup has a nice graph of trends by party identification here, indicating more of a downward trend among Independents, and a smaller but still noticeable decline among Republicans. Democrats have been fairly flat. Gallup's support among Republican's tends to the high end of the range across polls, probably due to different question wording for partisanship. (Gallup's long standing partisanship question emphasizes current feelings: "In politics, as of today, do you consider yourself a Republican, a Democrat, or an Independent?". Some others stress the longer term "Generally speaking, do you usually think of yourself as a Republican, a Democrat, an independent or what?".)
The question is whether Republicans are yet willing to reduce their support for President Bush still further. Republican Senators have begun a series of breaks with the President over Iraq policy and could signal to the grass roots that it is time for an end to unconditional support for Bush. On the other hand, Republicans in the House have retained their unity in support of the President's Iraq policy and so far Republican presidential candidates have refused to repudiate the President. With the divisive immigration bill behind him Bush may be able to sustain a new plateau in partisan support leading to a flattening out of his approval trend.
That assumes independents, or at least 20-25% of them, will also stay on board.
The other reason to think we may have reached a new plateau is that both the AP and the Newsweek polls are normally a bit below the trend estimate. AP is normally .93 percentage points below trend, while Newsweek averages 1.15 points below trend. While either current poll could well be randomly high and their next results return to below trend, these are not polls we usually expect to run above trend.
So the current estimate at 28% approval still signals deep trouble for President Bush, and the trend may remain in the 20s. But to sink much more is going to require a significant desertion by Republicans and/or Independents, moving below their current levels of support. The most likely way for that to happen is for Republican leaders to turn against the President. Will they?
Cross-posted at Political Arithmetik.
By Charles Franklin on July 16, 2007 6:12 PM
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July 14, 2007
By Mark Blumenthal
In case you missed it, here what President George W. Bush told
ten conservative journalists yesterday about polls on his performance in Iraq as reported
by the National Review (via Sullivan):
He explained "that last fall, if I
had been part of this polling, if they had called upstairs and said, do you
approve of Iraq I would have been on the 66 percent who said, 'No I don't
approve.' That's why I made the decision I made. To get in a position where I
would be able to say 'Yes, I approve.'"
By Mark Blumenthal on July 14, 2007 2:04 PM
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July 13, 2007
By Mark Blumenthal
The pollsters at the Washington
Post, Jon Cohen and Jennifer Agiesta, have a blog we managed to overlook called
"Behind the
Numbers." Recent posts drill deeper into the recent Post surveys of
political independents.
Kathy
Frankovic mines the Roper iPoll database and finds "2,377 public polling
questions that include the name "Hillary Clinton" or "Hillary
Rodham Clinton," and declares her "the most asked-about woman of all time."
Gary
Langer mulls the "career low" job ratings posted recently by President Bush
and concludes: "in terms of public opinion, this president's problems are all
about Iraq;
his approval rating and views of whether the war was worth fighting have
correlated since April 2003 at a near-perfect .93."
Huffington Post's Tom
Edsall digs deeper into both sides of the law suit between Clinton pollster Mark Penn and a group of
former employees: "Regardless of the outcome, the lawsuits themselves reveal
the corporate underbelly of Penn, Schoen and Berland, a company that celebrated
the dissolution of its partnership with spying, double-crosses, back-biting,
broken promises, and bitter legal accusations."
Survey Sampling International (SSI) mourns the passing
of its founder, Tom Danbury, who passed away this week at the age of 71: "Mr.
Danbury is credited with a number of innovations for the market research
industry and he, in fact, founded the first commercial sampling company."
By Mark Blumenthal on July 13, 2007 10:00 PM
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By Charles Franklin
A new Harris Interactive poll taken 7/6-9/07 finds approval of President Bush at 26%, with disapproval at 73%. With the addition of this poll, the trend estimate stands at 27.2% approval. The Harris polls is in line with a recent Newsweek at 26%, CBS at 27% and Gallup at 29%. As can seen from the residual plot below, it is also well within the range of expected variation for polls around the trend estimate.
The "But..." in the title of the post is because it appears there is a new AP/Ipsos poll with approval of Bush at 33%. An AP article on economic confidence mentions this approval result, but so far I've not seen an official release of presidential approval from the new AP/Ipsos poll. Because the AP/Ipsos approval number is not yet "official" (in my book at least) I will not do a post on it yet.
However, it would be deceptive to pretend I am unaware of that result. So, the "But..." is that this AP poll should be officially released by AP soon. When that happens, and assuming the correct number actually is 33% (I assume it will be, since it was cited by an AP reporter, but you never know for sure until the release is out), then the trend estimate WITH AP will be 27.8%, rather than 27.2% with only the new Harris. BUT since AP decided to use the number in a story prior to releasing the official result, it is not yet certain (to me) that this will be their result. (Perhaps final processing of the new AP/Ipsos approval poll is not yet final, and a different result appears. But if so, I am surprised it was allowed to be used in a story.)
The bottom line is that either way approval continues in the upper 20s, and that certainly remains bad for the administration.
With the Harris poll (but NOT AP) there are not concerns in the diagnostics below, and the recent polling continues to follow the trend as we would expect.
Cross-posted at Political Arithmetik.
By Charles Franklin on July 13, 2007 6:07 PM
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July 10, 2007
By Charles Franklin
The USAToday/Gallup Poll taken 7/6-8/07 has found approval of President Bush at 29%, disapproval at 66%. This is the first time Gallup has found approval of President Bush below 30%. My approval trend estimate now stands at 27.7%.
While other polls have fallen into the 20s in recent weeks, Gallup had not done a survey since mid-June. Gallup on average falls 1.26 percentage points above the trend estimate, so the new reading is quite consistent with both the trend and the house effect.
The trend estimate has now held below 30% for the last 7 polls, despite two of those polls coming in at 31% and 32%. Unless something reverses the current downward trend, it is likely that President Bush will see a range of polling over the next couple of weeks ranging from 23% to 33% but with most in the 20s. That is a poisonous level of support for Republicans in Congress, where support for the President's policies has continued to erode.
Republican support in the latest poll is at 68%, only the 2nd time Gallup has found Republican support below 70% during the Bush administration.
Other indicators in the new poll are also bleak for the White House. A full 66% in the poll say Bush should not have intervened in the Libby case, with 13% saying commutation was the right thing to do, while 6% would have preferred a full pardon. This confirms earlier "instant" polls that found low levels of support for the commutation. And for the first time, over 60% of the sample says that it was a mistake to invade Iraq: 62%.
Cross-posted at Political Arithmetik.
By Charles Franklin on July 10, 2007 3:34 PM
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July 9, 2007
By Charles Franklin
A Newsweek poll taken 7/2-3/07 finds approval of President Bush at 26%, disapproval at 65%, unchanged from Newsweek's previous poll done 6/18-19. With the addition of the Newsweek poll, the trend estimate stands at 27.9%.
This Newsweek poll was completed on the day the commutation of Scooter Libby's prison sentence was announced, so most respondents were interviewed before that news broke. With the 4th of July holiday interrupting most polling operations, new approval ratings taken entirely after the commutation will only become available this coming week.
Four of the six most recent polls (including two by Newsweek) are typically below trend, with two tending to fall above trend. It will be revealing to see some new polls from those with typically positive "house effects". While those could be as high as 33%, given my current trend estimate, we should expect Gallup to fall between 29% and 31%, given current trends and Gallup's typical house effect. ABC/WP who hasn't been heard from in a while might be expected at 29-32. It will be revealing if either comes in below (or more surprisingly, above) those ranges.
The current Newsweek poll is 1.9 points below trend, well within the range of normal variation. (There are two Newsweek polls in the residual plot below, with the lower Newsweek being the earlier June poll, though it too is well within normal limits.)
The rest of the diagnostics continue to support a continuing decline in support since late April. The Libby commutation, or the immigration bill's defeat, might have shifted the trend-- but which way? Arguments have been made both ways. We need a number of new post-Libby polls to detect whatever effect there may have been. Stay tuned.
Cross-posted at Political Arithmetik.
By Charles Franklin on July 9, 2007 3:19 PM
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July 6, 2007
By Mark Blumenthal
- ABC's Gary Langer highlights
methodological deficiencies in two widely reported studies on death rates in New Orleans and the
availability of unused embryos for medical research.
- Both Gallup Guru Frank
Newport and CBS pollster Kathy
Frankovic speculate about the next turn in the Bush job rating. Newport teases that "new
USA Today/Gallup poll data on Bush out at the beginning of next week."
- One we missed: Republican pollsters Fabrizio, McLaughlin and
Associates released a survey of 2,000 self described Republican voters
conducted about a month ago "via telephone and online." Their report
divides Republicans into seven segments and updates a similar survey conducted by
the firm in 1997 (link via Edsall
by way of Kilgore,
first reported by Ambinder).
By Mark Blumenthal on July 6, 2007 10:33 PM
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July 2, 2007
By Charles Franklin
A new CBS News Poll taken 6/26-28/07 finds approval of President Bush at 27% and disapproval at 65%. With this poll, my approval trend estimate stands at 28.9%.
CBS and Fox polls completed at the end of last week neatly bracket the approval trend, with Fox 2.1 points over trend at 31% and CBS at 1.9