by Mark Silva
President Bush, whose public approval ratings have hovered in the low 30s for some time, has reached a new career low in the measure of the Gallup Poll:
28 percent.
The president faces this trough at a time when public opposition to the war in Iraq is unabated — as is his insistence that the United States can succeed in the mission there. It arrives in a week in which Congress slapped him down on a Colombia Free Trade Agreement.
“Bush’s approval is lower than that of any president since World War II, with the exceptions of Jimmy Carter (who had a low point of 28 percent in 1979), and Richard Nixon and Harry Truman, who suffered ratings in the low- to mid-20 percent range in the last years of their administrations,” Gallup’s Frank Newport reports today.
His previous low: 29 percent, in a July 2007 Gallup Poll. Since then, the president’s approval ratings have run generally in the low 30 percent range, averaging 32.5 percent in eight polls run this year before the most recent one — conducted April 6 through 9.
The president’s average during his first seven years: 52 percent.
His high: 90 percent, in September 2001, immediately after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 — and that peak represented a record high in Gallup’s history of presidential pulse-taking.
From year to year, Bush’s ratings have fallen from 68 percent and 71 percent averages in his first two years in office to 33 percent in his seventh year. “Bush’s low rating in the current poll is the result of an extraordinarily low average approval rating from Democrats, a low level of support from independents, and support from just two-thirds of his base of Republicans,” notes Newport, editor-in-chief of the Gallup Poll.
