I have been addicted to the
Professor Pollkatz Pool of Polls since early in 2004, and I've posted a number of comments referencing it. Professor Pollkatz, aka Stuart Eugene Thiel of the Economics Dept of Depaul University. This page collects and analyzes the results of 15 major nationwide polls, and I find it a much better way to get a sense of trends than watching any individual poll.
For some time I've been meaning to start a weekly diary on this summary chart With Bush now in free fall, perhaps I delayed this project a little too long for the interesting stuff. Perhaps not.
More below.
I don't have much time this morning, so I can't do the graphic stuff I was planning to include in this diary. Soon. Right now, let me just point out a few things which you can see on the chart.
The chart shows approval minus disapproval for each poll, so going below the baseline indicates that disapproval outscores approval. Prof. Pollkatz updates this chart approximately every Monday afternoon, with results up to around the previous Friday or so. The polls on here go up to September 1, so they include post-Katrina polling.
LOOK AT THOSE LAST POINTS! I think I can safely say that Bush really is in new low territory. Not only is the lowest point the lowest of any poll over his term in office, crossing the -20% mark, but the HIGHEST POINT is well into negative territory.
AND THAT HIGHEST POLL, SOLIDLY INTO THE RED, IS FOX (green diamonds)
We all have our inner pessimist, and so many Kossacks have been saying things like "yeah, but the PR machine can bring him back up". To a certain extent that's true. Look at the second half of 2004 and there's a clear upward trend, the only time in his term in which there WAS a long-term upward trend. The enormous resources they threw at the election clearly managed to pull him up into net positive territory.
Not this time. Even if they had the resources to spend and were interested in spending them, I think the base has well and truly cracked.
By the way, if you prefer seeing smoothed trends rather than the individual points, you can get that here