Early Reactions
Rasmussen Reports is a polling place that keeps track of the President’s approval rating on a very consistent and regular basis. The keep a running poll based on the response from the previous three nights. They also ask the same question in the same way every night. From their web site they explain what they ask, and how it may give different results than other polling places.
At Rasmussen Reports, we ask if people Strongly Approve, Somewhat Approve, Somewhat Disapprove, or Strongly Disapprove of the way the President is performing his job. This approach, in the current political environment, yields results about 3-4 points higher than if we simply ask if people if they approve or disapprove (we have tested this by asking the question both ways on the same night). Presumably, this is because some people who are a bit uncomfortable saying they “Approve” are willing to say they “Somewhat Approve.” It’s worth noting that, with our approach, virtually nobody offers a “Not Sure” response when asked about the President.
Today’s numbers (35% Approval and 61% Disapproval) are not entirely from the polling taken after the president made his famous “escalation” speech. But even with only 2/3 of the data being taken after the president’s speech we see that his slight upward trend from recent days has been arrested in its tracks. The president’s approval at Rasmussen had been hovering at about 40% for many months now with only slight fluctuations. But, in recent days his approval had begun to climb to about 45%. I suspect that this climb had been due to a favorable anticipation of his speech on “What to do next in Iraq.” People had held out hope that George W Bush would finally make a sensible decision and do the right thing. Obviously all hope has been lost and the disillusioned people who had held some hope in what he might say have finally realized that there is no hope.
But an interesting highlight to these numbers is that the number of people who strongly approve of what the president is doing has finally fallen from the impenetrable 20% mark. These were the people who had stuck with the president no matter what he did. Katrina did not effect this number. Nothing had ever moved this number until the speech that he made on Wednesday night. With 2/3 of the polling taken after this speech his “strongly approve” number has fallen to 16%. Tonight’s data will be added to the mix and the true effect of his speech will be seen tomorrow at Rasmussen Reports.
But, the sad thing is that even though so few people respect this guy. Even fewer agree with him. And, there isn’t much that we can do about it. The Democrats have control of Congress and they can finally ask him the questions that most of us would like to have answered. And, most people would be embarrassed when all of their faults and failures are put out there for us all to see. In such an event most people would realize that they need to fix the problems and they would be willing to listen to the experts and correct their failures. Some people do not need the public pressure, but unfortunately some people do. This works for most sane people. The problem here is that we do not have a sane President in the White House. We do not have an administration that listens to the experts and makes rational decisions. Instead we have an administration that is disillusioned with hubris. This administration believes that they know the right answers despite what the experts have told them. So, this means that no one can change the course that we are on despite the efforts that we continue to be made.
So, with two days out of three in polling since the fated speech we can say that the public has not been convinced by the president. But, of course, this will never matter to the man who doesn’t read and doesn’t care what the polls or experts say.
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Don't forget what Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."
Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit
Reflection
