Just as I finished this post on new approval data, the Hotline released their new poll finding approval of President Bush at 38% with disapproval at 59%. The Hotline numbers come in between NBC/WSJ's 39% and CBS/NYT at 36% and the Gallup poll earlier in the week at 37%. That's a lot of consistency, and it all points to an approval level in the 37-38% range. My standard trend estimate is 37.7% with the addition of the Hotline result. (It was 37.6 before adding Hotline.)
See the earlier post here for a discussion of how the new polling affects my estimates of the trend in approval. Bottom line is that it looks like it has been pretty stable since June 11, despite three polls that reached 40% or more. While my standard blue trend sees some slight continuing increase, the more responsive red line estimator sees flat and a very slight recent decline. But I mean VERY slight. None of these estimates is clear enough to be willing to declare a trend has begun either way. The revised estimates do, however, argue that the rise in approval never actually reached as high as I thought (and the estimators estimated) in early July.
It has been a good week for polling after a long drought. Maybe we'll see a couple more by early next week. Maybe they will help determine what is happening to the trend. Maybe.
Click here to go to Table of Contents
