LAT Brownstein: Bush approval #s indicate very close election

[DeepModem Mom]

THE RACE TO THE WHITE HOUSE
Focus on Foe May Hurt Bush
The president has been busy going after Kerry, but history suggests that boosting his own approval rating is his real ticket to reelection.

By Ronald Brownstein, Times Staff Writer


...Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton defeated incumbents despite polls late in the campaign showing that voters had significant doubts about their readiness for the presidency. For Bush, that history suggests that raising his approval rating — now right around 50% in most surveys — could be the key to four more years.

In every reelection attempt by a president since the Gallup Organization Inc. developed modern polling techniques, the incumbent's job approval rating — a crystallization of Americans' attitudes about the country's direction — has been perhaps the single most important variable in the outcome.

Since the mid-1950s, every incumbent with an approval rating comfortably above 50% in the election year has easily won a second term: Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956, Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964, Richard M. Nixon in 1972, Reagan in 1984 and Clinton in 1996....

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Polls show the younger Bush in a better political position at this point than his father in 1992 or Carter in 1980. By late March of those years, approval ratings for the latter two had slid to around 40%. Ford's approval rating hovered just below 50% en route to a narrow loss to Carter...."If Bush is still around 50% (approval) in late October, then we are heading for a very close election," says (Alan Abramowitz, a professor of political science at Emory University in Atlanta and an expert in presidential elections). "He is right on the cusp."


http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-approval24mar24,1,887829.story?coll=la-home-politics

[lancdem]

1. Brownstein is right

These attacks on Kerry have pushed Kerry's numbers down, but Bush's approval rating hasn't budged at all. The last two polls I've seen have Bush at 48 percent (Newsweek) and 46 percent (Zogby).