According to a CBS News poll conducted Thursday through Sunday, 28 percent of Americans approve of the way the president is handling his job, and more than twice as many, 64 percent, disapprove. It is the lowest approval rating the president has received in a CBS News poll, though it is statistically little different from the rating of 30 percent he received earlier this month.
Only Jimmy Carter has received a lower approval rating, 26 percent, in 1979, in surveys conducted by CBS News or its polling partner, The New York Times. In a Gallup poll conducted in August 1974, just before his resignation, Richard M. Nixon had a 24 percent approval rating.
In a new ABC News/Washington Post poll made public on Monday, only 33 percent approved of Mr. Bush’s job performance, and 65 disapproved, tying the record for his worst marks in that poll.
Charles Franklin’s latest presidential approval analysis shows that the 28 percent number may be an outlier, but the trend is negative:
Franklin’s plot of the long sweep of Bush approval (through January 21) looks even worse:
And as he notes (echoing my point about the myth of the bully pulpit), there’s little reason to expect tonight’s State of the Union address to change Bush’s numbers:
Despite the increased prominence of the speech, the effect of State of the Union addresses on presidential approval has generally been small to non-existent. The average change from before to after the SotU since 1946 has been -0.3 percentage points. Of the 50 post-war speeches for which we have good data, 30 changed approval of the president by 2 percentage points or less. So it is unlikely that President Bush’s address Tuesday night will do much to alter public perceptions in either direction, despite the hype around the speech.