One of the most frequent searches of PoliticalArithmetik is some variation on how low can approval of President Bush go. President Truman holds the all time low record, at 22%, and the comparison of Bush to Truman comes up a lot. So let's take a look at second term presidents who had generally low approval ratings. (That leaves out Eisenhower, Reagan and Clinton, plus the ones who never got a second term.)
It turns out the Bush-Truman comparison is a pretty good one in terms of both trends and levels of approval. Truman's bounces are similar to those of Bush and the current level of approval and its trend are quite close. In comparison, Johnson did better throughout his war, while Nixon sank lower and quicker as Watergate came to dominate public perceptions.
This doesn't mean that Bush will necessarily challenge Truman's lows, however. Throughout his presidency, Bush has maintained a considerably greater loyalty among Republicans than Truman did among Democrats. I wrote about this earlier here. At his low point, Truman was supported by less than half of all Democrats. Bush has never fallen below 70% approval among Republicans in Gallup polls. (He has been lower in other organization's polling, though not by a lot.) His support among Republicans in Gallup polls taken since January 1, 2007 are in order 79, 71, 76, 78, 76, and 70, for an average of 75.0%. By comparison, in the same period of 2005 Republican approval was consistently in the low 90s, averaging 91.1%. For the same period in 2006 it was mostly in the 80s, averaging 82.1%. So while Republican support has eroded significantly in the last two years, it remains well above Truman's lows among Democrats.
I don't think current trends alone are good predictors of future approval. Circumstances, events and presidential behavior drive approval, not a blind trend. So things could move up or down depending. But that said the comparison of Bush and Truman's approval trajectories is striking.
(Thanks to Phil Klinkner for provoking me to look at this.)
P.S. Some argue that being the "new Truman" is a good thing-- that history will judge President Bush much more favorably than do his contemporaries, just as has happened with Truman. I have no view on this aspect of Bush as the New Truman. I'm only concerned with the approval ratings here.
3 comments:
Wasn't Truman the president who resegregated the federal government? Just because history remembers you more fondly now doesn't mean you deserve that free pass.
Is a comparison of trends separated by some sixty years and presumably very distinct methodologies and societal norms very meaningful? And while we are at it, what do you make of the very deep troughs in Truman's favorability?
Robert-- I'm not sure what you are referring to about Truman. He DEsegregated the US military.
Anonymous-- While there have been changed in methodology (from face to face interviews with quota samples to random digit dialed telephone samples) I don't think these shifts make long term comparisons all that dubious. One advantage of Gallup is that they have used the same question wording since Truman. (Some of the FDR approval readings were based on a different wording.) One change that IS noticable is that there is a smaller "don't know" rate now than in the 40s-50s. That might be due to lower response rates now (meaning those who do respond are generally more politically involved that the population as a whole) or it could be we are more willing to judge the president now than in the aftermath of WWII. So I'd say the DK rate might be of some concern on comparability grounds, but I'm not overly bothered by this. For example, models of approval as a function of economic performance have performed reasonably well over this entire period without need for different models in different periods. That suggests reasonable comparability.
Truman's two low points are during the post WWII economic readjustment in '46-'47 and at the low point of the Korean war in '51-'52. The miraculous recovery in the 1948 election campaign is the really interesting period, but unfortunately we have relatively little data during that period.
BTW it was the 1948 campaign that launched the University of Michigan's Election Studies that have become the premier academic study of elections. They "happened" to include a vote question in a 1948 survey of foreign policy attitudes, and as a result were in a good position to shine light on the failure of other polls to anticipate Truman's surprise victory. The Michigan survey got Truman as the winner.
Post a Comment