Sunday April 10, 2005--Forty-six percent (46%) of American adults approve of the way George W. Bush is performing his role as President. Fifty-three percent (53%) disapprove.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/Bush_Job_Approval.htm
The President's rating is down three points from yesterday and at the lowest level we have recorded during the Bush Administration. It remains to be seen whether this is a real downward move or merely statistical noise.
I've been watching Rasmussen for a couple of months and the game is not Gallup's strong structural bias. The polling method is demographically solid, in my assessment, but it is unusual in that it teases out a maximum in soft but real Bush support. It finds when people really stop giving him the endless amount of goodwill and benefit of the doubt that they do.
It's also worth following the four subcategories Rasmussen does. There's a real story there of hardcore Bush support hollowing out and hardcore Bush rejection building. Furthermore, the present weak approval and disapproval are in a transient imbalance too- further drop is going to take place over the next few days. (Which, of course, also reflects the three day rolling average evaluation method.) I'd say we see 45s and 43s from Rasmussen in short order.
As politics it means Dubya has his pre-election 45% baseline back, more or less, and has lost all the Indies. But even that 45% baseline is breaking down. I'd say that the change since November is that of his two remaining political mainstays, Values is evidently in serious and rapid deterioration. (Thus Bushian Popeophilia.) The 'War on Terror' is not doing too well either- the appearances are charades, the reality that the Iraqis are gearing up to fight each other in a certainty that the 'Coalition' and Bush's international political cover are months away from implosion. But he's got nothing else left to tout