They win the Mitofsky Innovator Award
Interestingly, Charles labels the most recent Presidential Approval numbers as interesting because the demonstrate a level of stability that is amazing . I think it’s somewhat obvious, though certainly obvious conclusions need to be demonstrated, that the base of the Republican Party is remarkably solid and won’t change their opinion of Bush or unless he turns out to be an illegal Mexican immigrant performing abortions with his gay husband being his nurse.
“the base of the Republican Party is remarkably solid and won’t change their opinion of Bush”
Around here, we call those “Keyes voters”
— SCAM
Thanks much!
The Republican base has actually varied a bit from low 70s to mid 80s in the last year. Also Independents have fluctuated between low 20s and mid 30s. EVEN Dems vary from low single digits (I think 3% is the record low there) to as high as 18% approval.
So the idea that opinion has completely solidified among any group is not really supported.
That said, the general range of approval HAS been pretty stable, with each group staying in the range noted above.
Now that the semester is over I hope to be able to post something more detailed on this “real soon now”.
Charles
Damn you and your facts.
Of course, you are correct–the issue being I do think there is something about this core of support that makes it remarkably more stable than others–what that is is an empirical question and I could be wrong too–that said, I look forward to your discussions on it. I hadn’t had time to keep up on polling for a bit and saw the brief bits on the new lower polls, but hadn’t checked your site–not too surprisingly, the numbers hadn’t moved overall and we are still in that 33-35% range that has been remarkably sticky.
I thought Bush’s polls numbers had already tanked. I thought that he had hit his nadir around the 2006 election when all those scandals were breaking. Perhaps we’ll see him go down into the 20’s as he pushes the immigration bill and if there’s no progress in Iraq by the fall.