A new Harris Interactive poll taken 7/6-9/07 finds approval of President Bush at 26%, with disapproval at 73%. With the addition of this poll, the trend estimate stands at 27.2% approval. The Harris polls is in line with a recent Newsweek at 26%, CBS at 27% and Gallup at 29%. As can seen from the residual plot below, it is also well within the range of expected variation for polls around the trend estimate.
The "But..." in the title of the post is because it appears there is a new AP/Ipsos poll with approval of Bush at 33%. An AP article on economic confidence mentions this approval result, but so far I've not seen an official release of presidential approval from the new AP/Ipsos poll. Because the AP/Ipsos approval number is not yet "official" (in my book at least) I will not do a post on it yet.
However, it would be deceptive to pretend I am unaware of that result. So, the "But..." is that this AP poll should be officially released by AP soon. When that happens, and assuming the correct number actually is 33% (I assume it will be, since it was cited by an AP reporter, but you never know for sure until the release is out), then the trend estimate WITH AP will be 27.8%, rather than 27.2% with only the new Harris. BUT since AP decided to use the number in a story prior to releasing the official result, it is not yet certain (to me) that this will be their result. (Perhaps final processing of the new AP/Ipsos approval poll is not yet final, and a different result appears. But if so, I am surprised it was allowed to be used in a story.)
The bottom line is that either way approval continues in the upper 20s, and that certainly remains bad for the administration.
With the Harris poll (but NOT AP) there are not concerns in the diagnostics below, and the recent polling continues to follow the trend as we would expect.
