The Command Post
2004 US Presidential Election
« Edwards supporters hit the circus | Main | Dean Spent $6.5M on Staff, Consultants »
February 01, 2004
| Bush Support Slipping (Up)

Or maybe “Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics”. From Reuters, via the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

United States President George W Bush’s popularity with American voters has dropped to a new low.

The weekly Newsweek opinion poll shows Mr Bush’s approval rating at 49 per cent, down from a high of 71 per cent after the fall of Baghdad in April last year.

Of poll respondents, 49 per cent said they did not want to see Mr Bush re-elected to a second term, a drop of 3 per cent on last week.

In other words, 49% of all Americans, Democrat and Republicans, who are Newsweek readers, didn’t want Bush to serve a second term. If you read the original article carefully, that’s an improvement, as last week 52% didn’t want him.

On the other side of politics, Democrats Senator John Kerry, fresh from primary victories in Iowa and New Hampshire, has climbed sharply in voter approval over the other presidential hopefuls.

The poll shows Senator Kerry with 45 per cent of the potential Democratic vote, up from 30 per cent a week ago.

So only 45% of Democrats want Kerry instead. It would be interesting to see how many Republicans prefer him to Bush.

Read the Newsweek data. Everything’s been spun so much it’s impossible to say what the figures mean. For example,

In a hypothetical vote, Kerry and Bush are locked in a dead heat, with Kerry pulling 48 percent or registered voters vs. Bush’s 46 percent.

Not good news for the Republicans - but wait, the previous sentence implies the poll is of registered Democrats!



Posted by Alan Brain at February 1, 2004 12:31 AM | TrackBack
Comments

And they wrap it up with: “Still, a full 79 percent of all registered voters believe it is either “somewhat” or “very” likely Bush will defeat his Democratic competitor in November.”

Max

Posted by: Max Darkside at February 1, 2004 02:04 AM

The 45%-support-Kerry isn’t confusing at all — that’s presidential primary preference (i.e., vs. Edwards-Dean-Clark et al.). Surely Kerry polls more than 45% against Bush amongst Democrats.

Posted by: inonit at February 1, 2004 06:57 AM

inonit:
Yes, as the last quote says, 49%, a whopping 4% more.

Posted by: Alan E Brain at February 1, 2004 07:39 AM

And I just read in the latest “National Review” of a national poll (CNN/Gallup, I think) that had Bush’s approval rating at 59%. If Newsweek’s readers are anything like my folks (who read Newsweek), they tend to tilt a bit to the left.

Posted by: Curt at February 1, 2004 07:46 AM

Correction: That was a CNN/USA Today poll. This was in the 2/9/04 print edition of NR, so I believe the data was from within the past week or two.

Posted by: Curt at February 1, 2004 07:52 AM

Which goes to show you the problem with our corporate media. The spin, not just reporting the facts but tweaking them to where it reads the way they want it to read. The accuracy of polls anymore is getting worse. Who did they poll, how the questions were asked & what questions were asked.

Posted by: Jon at February 1, 2004 09:21 AM

Stick with Zogby or Gallup or someone who does this for a living. Newsweek’s ‘true colors’ are always seen through those rose-colored glasses - the ones that say no matter how bad it is now, soon the selected Pretender will be ejected from the White House, Babs will be back at the State Dinners and we can go back to 39% (or how about 50%? - ooooh) effective tax rates and other policies that made our country great.

(With the Internationale playing in the background)

Posted by: torpedo_eight at February 1, 2004 10:43 AM

Okay look after the whole dean Iowa fiasco i have trouble whith just sbout anything these guys say on the news. There almost like pathetic gamblers coming up who wil win what and now that kerry is ahead there going on the media band showing how he has all this “momentum”. All these damn numbers won’t mean anything once the primaries are over.

Posted by: frank at February 1, 2004 12:32 PM

The article starts with Bush support slipping to a ‘historic’ low. 49% is historic? Clinton started his career in ‘92 with 43% of the vote, though I don’t know how he did with registered voters.

Man, these guys are lazy. “Let’s poll until we get some results that we can exclaim as newsworthy!” And then they still botch the story.

Posted by: Take My Poll at February 1, 2004 02:09 PM

Take my poll…

Read a little harder buddy they meant historic for him personally….it is his “personal low…”

Newsweek and Zogby seem to agree that his approval rating is hovering around 50%…

The newsweek article does make a clear distinction between approval rating and electibility.

Posted by: what2 at February 1, 2004 03:18 PM

When a poll says something different from most of the others, it’s worth checking to see why.

When a poll claims something not only different from EVERY other major poll, but is radically different from its own polls of only 10-15 days earlier, one does well to take a grain of salt. A large bit, actually.

But Newsweek has actually provided us a service. They have clearly shown one poll we can safely ignore this fall.

Posted by: GDubya at February 1, 2004 10:37 PM

Post a comment

Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (Click here should you choose to sign out.)

As you post your comment, please mind our simple comment policy: we welcome all perspectives, but require that comments be both civil and respectful. We also ask that you avoid the extensive use of profanity, racist terms (neither of which we consider civil or respectful), and other boorish language.

We reserve the right to delete any comment, and to prohibit you from commenting on this site, if we feel you have broached this policy. As a courtesy, we will first send you an email noting a violation so you understand the boundaries. This will occur only once, however, and should we ban you from our comment forums we expect that ban to be permanent.

We also will frown upon those who suggest that we ban other individuals for voicing unpopular opinions, should those opinions be voiced in a civil and respectful manner. The point of our comment threads is to provide a forum for spirited though civil and respectful discourse … it is not to provide a forum in which everyone will agree with your point of view.

If you can live by these rules, welcome aboard. If not, then we’re sorry it didn’t work out, and thanks for visiting The Command Post.


Remember me?

(You may use HTML tags for style)