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Approval rating lowest for Bush
Bush's approval rating fell to 46 percent this month from 49 percent in March, and his lead over Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry dropped by 3 percentage points, giving him support from 43 percent of registered voters to Kerry's 40 percent, according to data published by Quinnipiac University's Polling Institute. Kerry's support was unchanged from March.
Concerns about the Iraq war have risen in the Quinnipiac and other polls as the number of U.S. military personnel killed in Iraq reached a record 142 last month and photographs of U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners were broadcast April 28. The Quinnipiac survey was conducted April 26 to May 3.
"Americans think the Bush team fouled up the occupation of Iraq, but they still trust the president to do a better job than Kerry of wrapping things up," said Maurice Carroll, director of the polling institute, based in Hamden, Conn.
Bush has focused his re-election campaign on his leadership in the war to oust former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and fighting terrorism. Bush gave interviews on two Arabic television networks today criticizing the abuses of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. troops as "abhorrent" and vowing to pursue those responsible.
Fifty-one percent of those polled said they disapproved of the way Bush was handling Iraq, up from 48 percent in a December poll. Still, Bush was favored as more likely than Kerry to bring the Iraqi conflict "to a successful conclusion" by a margin of 48-37 percent, in the poll released today. The telephone survey of 2,106 registered voters has a plus or minus 2.2 percentage point margin of error.
The proportion of those saying the United States was right to go to war in Iraq fell to 48 percent from 54 percent in March, the lowest level since the United States invaded last year.
Bush campaign spokesman Scott Stanzel, in an online chat on the campaign's Web site, said the president was in good shape.
"President Bush enjoys broad support throughout the country and recent polls indicate that he is in a better position than Ronald Reagan was in 1984 and President Clinton was in 1996," he said.
A spokesman for Kerry, a four-term U.S. senator from Massachusetts, didn't return a call seeking comment. At a news conference today in Los Angeles, Kerry said the Bush campaign has spent more than $40 million on advertising attacking him and the two remain tied across the country.
"We are six months from the election, and I like where we are today," Kerry said.
If the election were held now and included independent candidate Ralph Nader, Bush, 57, would get support of 43 percent of those polled to 40 percent who would vote for Kerry, 60. Nader, 70, would draw 6 percent and 9 percent were undecided.
Without Nader in the race, Bush edges Kerry 44 percent to 43 percent, a statistical tie. Kerry's support hasn't increased since the last Quinnipiac poll in March even as Bush's has declined.
"Bush and his team are going down in their approval ratings, but Sen. Kerry is going nowhere," Carroll said.
Fifty-two percent of voters disapproved of the job Bush is doing on the economy, up from 50 percent in March. The economy was named as the most important issue in the presidential election by 27 percent, followed by Iraq, which was named by 20 percent of those polled.
The economy was rated "not good" or "poor" by 61 percent of those polled, up from 58 percent in a December survey.
