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taking heavy toll on Bush’s popularity! *chuckle*
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Date Posted: 23:17:30 07/22/02 Mon
Author Host/IP: 63.215.175.246
Bush re-election support falls
Scandals, stocks drag down president’s popularity
By Alex Johnson
MSNBC
July 22 — The economy and the accounting scandals surrounding large corporations appear to be taking a heavy toll on President Bush’s popularity, according to two opinion surveys released Monday. In one of the polls, fewer than half of the likely voters questioned said they believe he should be re-elected.
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July 22 — The White House said singling out President Bush was unfair. NBC's Campbell Brown reports.
THE ZOGBY America Poll, conducted Friday through Sunday, showed that 47 percent of likely voters believed that Bush deserved re-election, compared to 32 percent who said it was time for someone new.
The poll, conducted by the nonpartisan public opinion firm Zogby International of Genesee, N.Y., surveyed 1,003 likely voters nationwide. The poll reported a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.2 percentage points.
The president appeared to suffer significant damage from the plummeting stock market and the accounting scandals, according to a separate poll.
In that survey, partial results of which were released Monday, 46 percent of adults questioned by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal said they disapproved of the job Bush was doing specifically on “the problems of the financial markets and major corporations.”
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Forty percent approved in the poll of 1,014 adults, which reported a margin of error of 3.1 percent and was conducted during the same time period.
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OVERALL APPROVAL UNCLEAR
The two surveys gave substantially different pictures of Bush’s approval in general, which could be the result of the NBC poll’s overall focus on economic issues.
Bush’s positive approval rating in the Zogby poll, 62 percent, was unchanged from a similar Zogby poll last week, as was his negative rating, 38 percent. The ratings are the lowest Bush has received since the week before Sept. 11, when voters gave him a 50 percent positive rating and a 49 percent negative rating in a similar Zogby survey.
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The NBC poll had better news for the president, finding somewhat higher approval for the president, at 67 percent, and a significantly lower level of disapproval, at 27 percent. The differences came from the far higher percentage of respondents in the Zogby poll who said they were still undecided, at 21 percent versus only 6 percent in the NBC poll.
NBC News and the Journal did not report whether respondents were asked whether the president should be re-elected. Further results from their poll were expected to be released later in the week.
Bush’s approval ratings remained extraordinarily high for months after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. But his ratings began inching downward as attention shifted from the military campaign in Afghanistan to the slumping economy in late February, when 74 percent of likely voters in a Zogby poll approved of his performance.
Assessing the general trends, pollster John Zogby said, “Here is a president who was elected with only 48 percent of the popular vote, and more than 1½ years later, even in a time of war, remains stuck in that position.”
In this November's elections, the Democrats stand an excellent chance of enlarging their majority in the Senate since they have only 14 seats at stake, while Republicans must defend 20 seats. Click above to read assessments of the most hotly contested races by MSNBC's Tom Curry.
Wayne Allard, Colorado
Sen. Wayne Allard, a soft-spoken former veterinarian, faces a tough fight against his more charismatic challenger Tom Strickland, former federal prosecutor in Denver, whom he beat in 1996 by 72,000 votes. A recent Denver Post/Ciruli Associates poll shows Colorado residents rallying to Allard in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, with a 51 percent to 35 percent lead over Strickland. Those surveyed in the poll rated Allard stronger on national defense and fighting terrorism than Strickland.
Incumbent
Gordon Smith, Oregon
Democrats' hopes of picking up this seat were dampened last September when popular Democratic Gov. John Kitzhaber announced that he would not run against Smith. Instead Smith will face Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradbury. The cerebral and courtly Smith takes pride in doing joint town hall meetings across Oregon with his Democratic colleague, Sen. Ron Wyden. Smith broke with President Bush by supporting more federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. In recent elections, Oregon has voted Democratic: Gore narrowly carried the state in the 2000 presidential election. Smith won his seat in 1996 with 50 percent of the vote.
Incumbent
Open seat (Helms), North Carolina
Jesse Helms, the die-hard enemy of liberal Democrats, feminists and gay rights activists, is retiring after serving in the Senate since 1973. Republicans may turn to former GOP presidential contender Elizabeth Dole, who was born and raised in North Carolina. But Dole ran an unimpressive campaign for the GOP presidential nomination and other Republicans such as Rep. Richard Burr may challenge Dole. Secretary of State Elaine Marshall is a leading contender for the Democratic nomination.
Bob Smith, N.H.
Widely seen as the most vulnerable incumbent in 2002, Smith is known for his passionate opposition to abortion and his brief presidential candidacy in 1999. Smith quit the Republican Party in July 1999, denouncing party leaders for what he called a lack of conservative principles, but he returned a few months later. Some Granite State Republicans are urging Rep. John Sununu to challenge Smith for the nomination. Either man will face a tough race against likely Democratic candidate Gov. Jeanne Shaheen.
Incumbent
Tim Hutchinson, Arkansas
Democrats say that their polling shows that first-term Sen. Tim Hutchinson, is in jeopardy. Voters may be dismayed by his Hutchinson's 1999 divorce and remarriage to a former staffer -- Hutchinson is a Baptist minister who founded a Christian school. The Democratic challenger, state attorney general Mark Pryor, bears a famous Arkansas name: he's the son of former Sen. David Pryor.
Incumbent
Incumbent
Incumbent
Thompson, Tennessee
With Republican Fred Thompson not running for re-election, former Tennessee governor and presidential hopeful Lamar Alexander has entered the race. On the Democratic side, after a brief flurry of interest, Tipper Gore, wife of former vice president Al Gore, opted out of the race. The Democratic front-runner now appears to be Rep. Bob Clement, a moderate-to-conservative House member, who supported last year’s Bush tax cut and voted against background checks on purchasers at gun shows.
Incumbent
Incumbent
Open seat (Thurmond), South Carolina
Strom Thurmond, the longest-serving senator in U.S. history, will not run for another term, ending a Senate career that began in 1954. The Republican candidate will be folksy, wisecracking Rep. Lindsey Graham, who built a national reputation as one of the House prosecutors in the impeachment trial of President Clinton. Democrat Alex Sanders, former chief judge of the state Court of Appeals, is running against Graham. At the beginning of the year, Sanders had $1 million cash on hand, about half as much as Graham.
Incumbent
Incumbent
Incumbent
Gramm, Texas
The retirement of GOP Sen. Phil Gramm gives Democrats a shot at winning their first Senate seat in Texas in 14 years. Former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk is the Democratic candidate. If elected to the Senate, Kirk would be the first black senator from the South since 1881. State Attorney General John Cornyn is the GOP candidate.
Incumbent
Incumbent
Incumbent
Incumbent
Incumbent
Johnson, South Dakota
The Republicans' best opportunity to pick up a Democratic seat may be in South Dakota, where first-term Sen. Tim Johnson will face Rep. John Thune. President Bush, who carried the state with 60 percent, leaned on Thune to forgo an easier race for governor and run against Johnson. The Democrat, who won his seat with 51 percent of the vote in 1996, voted for the Bush-supported tax cut, but voted against confirmation of John Ashcroft as attorney general. Thune has amassed a conservative voting record in his four years in the House.
Incumbent
Carnahan, Missouri
Just three weeks before the 2000 election, Gov. Mel Carnahan was killed in plane crash in the midst of his bitter Senate race against Republican John Ashcroft. Carnahan won the seat posthumously, which led acting Gov. Roger Wilson to appoint his widow, Jean Carnahan, to take the seat. She voted for the Bush-supported $1.35 trillion tax cut, but voted against confirming Ashcroft as attorney general. Conservative Republican Jim Talent, who lost a race for governor in 2000, will be her opponent. Bush narrowly carried Missouri in 2000.
Incumbent
Torricelli, New Jersey
Incumbent Robert Torricelli is under investigation by the Senate Ethics Committee for allegedly having accepted Italian suits, a Rolex watch and other items from a former campaign contributor, David Chang. Torricelli says these items were not gifts and that he didn't violate Senate rules. Torricelli won the seat in 1994 with 53 percent of the vote. No Republican has been elected senator from New Jersey since 1972. Republicans have chosen business mogul Doug Forrester to run against Torricelli.
Cleland, Georgia
Republicans have high hopes for Rep. Saxby Chambliss in his bid to topple Democrat Sen. Max Cleland. President Bush, who carried Georgia with 55 percent in 2000, campaigned in Atlanta on March 27 and criticized Cleland for not backing his appeals court nominee, Charles Pickering of Mississippi. Cleland has a middle-of-the-road voting record, supporting Bush’s tax cut, voting for fellow Georgian Zell Miller’s ban on increasing fuel economy standards for pick-up trucks, but opposing confirmation of John Ashcroft as attorney general.
Landrieu, Louisiana
Elected by a slim margin in 1996, Sen. Mary Landrieu appears to have the edge in this race, even though Louisiana voted Republican in the 2000 election. She has a middle-of-the road voting record and was one of 12 Senate Democrats to vote for President Bush's tax cut in 2001. But she faces three Republicans, Rep. John Cooksey, state legislator Tony Perkins and state Elections Commissioner Suzanne Haik Terrell, as well as a potential bid by Democrat Cleo Fields. Under Louisiana law, if no one gets 50 percent of the vote, the top two finishers go to a runoff. A multiple-candidate field could hold Landrieu under 50 percent.
Paul Wellstone, Minnesota
Polls in Minnesota show that feisty populist Sen. Paul Wellstone is in a dead heat against GOP challenger Norm Coleman, the former mayor of St. Paul, who was recruited for the race by Vice President Cheney. Wellstone faces another threat: Green Party candidate Ed McGaa, a Lakota Sioux who is the author of six books on American Indian spirituality. Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader won five percent of the Minnesota vote in 2000.
Incumbent
Incumbent
Source: MSNBC Research
PARTY-LINE SPLIT
With mid-term elections less than four months away, the months of bipartisan support the president has enjoyed have also begun giving way to traditional party-line divisions, the Zogby poll suggested.
Approval and disapproval overwhelmingly tracked party registration, with 83 percent of Republicans saying Bush deserved to be re-elected, compared to only 19 percent of Democrats. The poll indicated, however, that the president has opportunity for improvement — a quarter of Democrats and 28 percent of registered independents said they were still undecided.
The congressional campaign was a statistical dead heat, with 35 percent of voters saying they planned to vote for Democrats and 34 percent saying they would vote for Republicans, a statistically insignificant difference that was essentially unchanged from last week’s 34 percent-to-34 percent tie.
More than a quarter of the electorate, 28 percent, said it had not made up its mind, suggesting that the already fiercely contested campaign was likely to heat up even more as the parties wrestled for control of the divided Congress.
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Bush re-election support falls ! Economy and accounting scandals surrounding large corporations