President Bush's approval rating slipped to new lows in the most recent Harris Interactive survey, but he's not alone: For the first time since the series began, all of the political figures and institutions included in the survey have negative performance ratings.
Of the 1,001 American adults polled online April 20-23, only 28% had a positive view of Mr. Bush's job performance, down from 32% in February and from a high of 88% in the aftermath of the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The current rating is his weakest showing since his inauguration.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice garnered the approval of 45% of those surveyed, down from 46% in February, and approval of Defense Secretary Robert Gates slid to 29% in the latest poll, from 32% in February.
Among other individuals included in the poll, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) saw her approval rating fall to 30% in April from 38% in February, shortly after her swearing-in as the first female House speaker. Approval for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) slipped to 22%, from 23% in February but up from 19% a year ago.
Those polled gave Congress an approval rating of 27%, with the Democrats as a group pulling in 35% approval, compared with 22% for Republicans.
When asked which two issues the government should address first, 30% of poll respondents said the war and 13% said Iraq. Domestic concerns rounded out the top spots, with 15% of those polled mentioning health care and 10% pointing to the economy.
I'm not sure what to say about this poll regarding House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's numbers. I think the problem with The Harris Poll is how do you interpret the results of these numbers here. Look at this Table 1 from the Harris Poll:
The Harris Poll is placing the numerical values of "Excellent" and "Pretty Good" as a positive result, while also placing the numerical values of "Only Fair" and "Poor" as a negative result. Both Pelosi and Reid have a large numerical values in the "Only Fair" catagory--Pelosi has 33 percent of the public rating her as "Only Fair," while Reid has a 35 percent rating. And since Harris interprets "Only Fair" as a negative rating, this skewers both Pelosi and Reid's numbers as being negative. The "Unsures" are not counted in either the positive or negative ratings. This interpretation also skewers President Bush's job approval ratings to a higher negative value, since 22 percent of the American public rate Bush as "Only Fair." Now compare the Harris poll results to The Polling Report job approval numbers for Pelosi and Reid. Now Polling Report asks whether you approve or disapprove of Pelosi and Reid's handling of their jobs. According to the April 12-15 ABC News/Washington Post poll, 53 percent of Americans approve of Pelosi's job as speaker, 35 percent disapprove of her job, and 12 percent are unsure. The same ABC News/Washington Post poll reports Reid's job performance as 46 percent approve, 33 percent disapprove, and 21 percent are unsure. Polling Report asks a simple question of whether you approve or disapprove of an official's performance, rather than trying to assign weighted values which can be open to interpretation. And it is the same with Bush job performance here as well, where the latest Polling Report numbers show a job approval rating of around 32-38 percent, and a disapproval rating of 54-62 percent. And the numbers have been pretty much consistent throughout April. And as for the year, Bush's job approval ratings have been around one-third of the country approving of his performance and two-thirds of the country disapproving of his performance. So it is certainly interesting how the Harris Poll has interpreted its results here, and how they will contradict the other poll results.
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