The latest Gallup poll, 4/10-13/06, finds approval at 36%, disapproval at 59%. My local trend estimate (blue line in the figure above) is 37.0% approval. The flattening of approval around 37% has continued for the last 30 days, since mid-March. Gallup has had steady readings of 36, 37, 37 and 36 since 3/10-12.
The SurveyUSA 50 state tracking poll for 4/7-9/06 has a national estimate of 36%. I don't include SurveyUSA in my national approval tracking, but it is of interest to compare it with conventional telephone polls as a means of assessing the reliability of the SurveyUSA data gathered from "robo-callers", recorded voices with respondents pushing phone buttons to respond. I'll be doing some more systematic checks on their data soon.
After the flurry of early April polls, the volume of polling has fallen off considerably. I continue to think it makes better business sense to spread the polling across the month so as not to conflict with other polls from early in the month. If everyone polls early in the month they step on each other's stories AND we get a poorer picture of how approval changes over time because we have few polls from later in the month.
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