Bush’s poll numbers are increasing:
We’re seeing some slight hints of positive news for the Bush administration. For one thing, Bush’s job approval rating has stopped its downward trajectory. Bush hit bottom with his administration low point of 29% in early July (based on our USA Today/Gallup poll readings). Now – in the data just about to be released from our weekend poll – Bush’s approval rating has recovered slightly to 34%. That’s not a big jump, but it is the second consecutive poll in which the president’s numbers have been higher rather than lower.
Also, we are seeing a slight uptick in the percentage of Americans who say the “surge” in Iraq is working. That may not be a total surprise given the general tone of news out of Iraq recently, including the positive light on the situation put forth by Michael E. O’Hanlon and Kenneth M. Pollack in their widely-discussed New York Times op-ed piece “A War We Just Might Win” on July 30. But it represents a change.
Indeed, the most recent New York Times/CBS News poll itself found a slight increase in the percent of Americans saying that the U.S. did the right thing in taking military action in Iraq, and were so uncertain about it that they redid the survey. And found the same results. (See this discussion by the Times’ Janet Elder).
As always, take this with a grain of salt (and by all means, remember that statistics have a left wing bias!). As to the surge, only time will tell. I am not convinced that winning the PR front for the surge equates into the surge actually working, something about which I remain skeptical and hopeful, but I am somewhat a believer in aggregated intelligence as reflected in polling data (when 70% of the country says Bush sucks and he has a 29% approval rating, I think there is something to it. Like wise, when more people say the surge may be working, there may be something to it that goes beyond any pr campaigns put forward by the administration and surge proponents).
At any rate, hard to interpret this as anything other than good news for Bush and the GOP, and let’s hope this data means the surge actually is working.