According to the latest CNN/USA Today poll, if an election were held this November (as opposed to last November) President Bush would be headed to a very significant defeat. Fifty five percent of respondents indicated that if the election were this year, they would vote for John Kerry or whoever else the Democrats were running, while only thirty-nine percent would vote for the President. He had forty-two percent approval in the poll, so even some people who approve of the job he is doing are at least undecided about whether they would vote for him.
One number that can be extrapolated from this fairly easily is that of those people who voted for President Bush one year ago, fully a quarter are not sure that they would vote for him again-- and about half of those would in fact not, and would vote for John Kerry.
Now granted, it is not the election year and people can say whatever they want, but keep in mind that seven years ago, President Clinton, dogged by the Monica scandal and incessant Republican attacks on his foreign policy in his handling of the Kosovo war, had approval ratings well over sixty percent. True, those attacks rang hollow (hint: total U.S. deaths in the Kosovo conflict: zero, largely because we didn't go in without a postwar plan) but it is hard not to see that President Bush is doing much more poorly by comparison.
Good, rational points Eli.
ReplyDeleteI seem to recall, not long ago, the polls suggested that Kerry would be the only defeated opponent of bush (however slightly). All other names offered in the poll would defeat bush soundly, so that's a wild (and good) swing. The PRETENDent must be "tubing" even more. :)
And it's not just dissatisfaction with Bush, it dissatisfaction with the extremes of the "conservative" agenda.
ReplyDeleteThe GOP is at a crossroads, it can stick with the coalition built with libertarian economic policies and the conservative social agenda that brought it to this point
or it can follow the likes of Bloomberg who delivered more affordable housing, increased school funding and performance, and allocated resources to poorer neighborhoods to reduce crime
and build a coalition that's sustainable.
This is, of course, assuming that the voting machine tabulations and the whole process is not compromised in any way?
ReplyDeleteThere's the most important point of all Barbi. As the last two fiascos have shown us- polling numbers- exit and otherwise (that have been accurate in all of presidential election history) mean nothing since Diebold, paperless machines, intimidation, ratio of polling booths to demographics, machine "error", "lost" ballots, etc.,.
ReplyDelete