However, while I fix the technical stuff and get life back to normal, Charles Franklin has ended classes and produced a fine piece of work on the prevalence of the name Monica since the Lewinsky scandal.
Also, while everyone has been getting hyped by plummeting Bush poll numbers, up until the last few days, there hasn’t been much movement. You can have your Pony now with the blue (more stable) estimator at 32.2% and red (more sensitive) at 31.2%.
As Charles says though:
The bottom line: The model is not yet unambiguously insisting on a new downturn in approval. And it would be well to remember that we’ve seen this kind of a dip more than once this spring, only to quickly see a return to the recent equilibrium. So before declaring that decline is a certainty, we should remember that such a prediction has been wrong recently.
He also gives some good discussion on why immigration is unlikely to hit Bush any harder since last year it didn’t have much of an effect. For Bush to go any lower he’ll need to significant losses in his base–so far he’s hanging around 70% approval amongst Republicans as Charles pointed out in comments.
I can imagine some scenarios where Bush loses more support as Republican candidates run against him as the election nears, but I think he’s hit the floor for now. That’s entirely speculation, but I just don’t see how the political environment leads to a true crack-up of the Republican base. I can also imagine a scenario where Bush’s approval stays the same throughout the election and Republican Presidential candidates who abandon Bush lose significant primary support thus creating the situation where the guy (and they are all old aging white guys) who wins has to figure out how to attract people other than the base while not distancing themselves from Bush. I’m thinking the best illustration of that would be the medieval stretching machines used for torture.