President Bush's Ratings Hit New Low, Poll Shows

May 12, 2006

THE HARRIS POLL

President Bush's Ratings Hit New Low, Poll Shows

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE
May 12, 2006

President Bush's job-approval rating has fallen to its lowest mark of his presidency, according to a new Harris Interactive poll.

Of 1,003 U.S. adults surveyed in a telephone poll, 29% think Mr. Bush is doing an "excellent or pretty good" job as president, down from 35% in April and significantly lower than 43% in January. It compares with 71% of Americans who said Mr. Bush is doing an "only fair or poor" job, up from 63% in April.

RATING BUSH'S PERFORMANCE

• See previous Harris polls from April1, March2 and February3 and January4 of 2006

• Polling organizations tracked in the related graphic5 ask respondents about President Bush's performance in different ways6.

Meanwhile, job-approval ratings for Congress are also sliding, as 18% of Americans say Congress is doing an "excellent or pretty good job," compared with 80% who say Congress is doing an "only fair or poor" job. In February, 25% of Americans gave Congress a positive rating and 71% gave a negative rating.

Elsewhere, roughly one-quarter of U.S. adults say "things in the country are going in the right direction," while 69% say "things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track." This trend has declined every month since January, when 33% said the nation was heading in the right direction.

In terms of political-party identification, 48% of Republicans said "right direction" while 39% of Republicans said "wrong track." In comparison, just 13% of Democrats said "right direction" and 83% of Democrats responded with "wrong track."

Iraq remains a key concern for the general public, as 28% of Americans said they consider Iraq to be one of the top two most important issues the government should address, up from 23% in April. The immigration debate also prompted 16% of Americans to consider it a top issue, down from 19% last month, but still sharply higher from just 4% in March.

Gas and oil prices (14%) leapfrogged health care as the third most important issue, up sharply from 3% from April, while the economy (13%) and health care (8%) rounded out the top five issues.

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