Bu$h popularity. I'm not surprised his numbers have rebounded somewhat. He has the MSM out here cheerleading for him 24/7 and sooner or later it had to help him. The Fascist mentality of the average Repuke citizen has also come to his aide here. These folks are perfectly comfortable with a Dictator and would help Bu$hCo if he decided to simply make himself El Presidente for Life. The MSM media would frame the decision as a necessary action taken regretfully of course to save the nation from traitors in the opposition. IMO all it's going to take is one more BIG trauma to end the facade of self government in Amerikkka.  The coming chaos of a global Flu pandemic will easily fill the bill in this dept.

Tomorrow's the day I was going to do my third installment comparing presidential approval, congressional approval, right track/wrong direction and generic ballot approval.

But I will say that, while I enjoy Pollkatz enormously, the best place for laser-like analysis of presidential approval ratings is Political Arithmetik, which indicated an end to Bush's decline in mid-May.  He uses a smoothing model that gets rid of a lot of noise, and also often a more sensitive model by way of comparison.  His latest post is here.

In it, he writes:

The addition of the LATimes brings my estimated approval trend to 38.98%, exactly a 5 point gain from the low of 33.98% on May 12. President Bush's approval rating fell from a 2006 high of 42.34% on January 5, losing 8.36% over 128 days, a rate of one point each 15.3 days. From May 15 to June 28 he has gained one point each 9.0 days, an impressive rate of gain.

This sharp turnaround in approval makes forecasting approval in November even more uncertain that it was before. In May we faced an unprecedented low in approval going into a midterm election. The current approval remains low, but is far from the historically unprecedented lows that seemed possible a month and a half ago. The uncertainty remains, however, as to how long this upward trend will last, and then what? Beats me, but it is going to be fun to watch.

Personally, it's my opinion that the Dems caution and outright cowardice allowed Bush to bounce back on the basis of almost nothing.  With his approval plummeting into the low 30s, the time was ripe to attack his core credibility--a strategy that could have made this sort of bounce back virtually impossible.  Instead, we have Barak Obama attacking folks like me, and pumping up the stock of religious hypocrisy.

Surprise!

Have any of you considered that Bush really isn't at 41%? This is, after all, the only poll which shows this.

Sure he got a bit of a bounce - but in reality, all he has accomplished is getting some renegade Republicans to return. The Republicans alone make up about 38% of the population. Independents still hate the guy. So who cares if he is at 38% or 33%. As long as he doesn't rise above 44% (the number of republican and independent conservatives in America) we'll be fine.

P.S. Every poll also shows Democrats gaining against Republicans in November. We lead from 13% to 20%. Not too bad.

The Immigration explanation also explains why - despite Bush's rising numbers - Congressional Republicans continue to fall.

The reason Bush fell to 33% in the first place was because he began losing Republican support. That seems to have stopped.

But ironically, the same methods the Republican used to get back their "base," seems to be hurting them with independents - hence the continuing fall.

Look at it this way. Here are the break-down of political affiliations according to Pew:

Republicans: [total - 38%]

Enterprisers 11%
Social Conservatives 17%
Liberal Republicans 10%

Independents: [total - 20%]

Conservative Independent 6%
Moderate Independent 6%
Liberal Independent 6%
Fringe (Green/Constitution Party, etc) 2%

Democrats: [total - 42%]

Liberal Democrat 18%
Conservative Democrat 13%
Disadvantaged Democrat 11%

First, at the very least a Republican should have 38% support, anything less than that automatically means that the Republicans are jumping ship. The Immigration issue is the reason why Bush fell to 33% in the first place.

Second, if you look at those numbers a couple of things should stand out (if you have been following polls over the past several years) - if you add the Democratic vote with the Liberal independents, you get 48% (our new floor in terms of support). If you add the conservative independent vote with the Republican vote, you get 44%. 48% to 44% was the average that Kerry led Bush before the Swiftboat smears in August of 2004. The 6% in the middle are the difference makers. That's the group Kerry lost in 2004 (and could have won), thus Bush won the election: 50% to 48%.

Third, before the 1990s, the "liberal" independents voted Republican as well. That was why we always got roughly 42% of the vote (1968 - 42%, 1972 - 41%, 1980 - 41%, 1984 - 42%, 1988 - 44%, 1992 - 43%, 1994 - 44%). That's the base Democratic vote. That changed in 1996 when Clinton won 49%. In 1996 and 1998#, we won 48%. In 2000, Gore won 49%. In 2004, Kerry won 48%. Why the uptick in support? Because we added the "liberal" independent vote with the Democratic base vote.

Finally, that middle 6% (of independents) voted for Bush in 2000* and 2004. They voted for the Republicans for Congress in the 1990s. But they voted for Perot in 1992 and 1996 (thus allowing us to win the Presidency). This goes to show that this group, which is traditionally old-school Republican and not old Democratic voters coming home, began abandoning the Republicans in the 1990s. But we Democrats screwed up and failed to win them over. They went for Bush's "Compassionate Conservatism" in 2000, but began to abandon him during his first term. Again, we failed to capitalize in that election. This group now seems completely fed up with Bush, and for the first time ever are now saying that they will vote Democratic.

Now look at the newest Gallup Poll:

Democrats 54%
Republicans 38%

We're in pretty good shape for this November. My prediction is we win it by at least 10% - 12% (which is most likely), but could win by as much as 22% if we play our cards right.

If this middle 6% flip, then what we are looking at is the beginning of a Democratic political reallignment. No doubt about that.

# The Congressional elections prior to the 1990s don't really fit into this model only because there were a number of Conservative Southern Democrats that were still around as hold over from when we ruled the South. After 1994, Congressional elections began to mimic Presidential elections, which ironically enough may have actually helped us in the long run since it allows us to "nationalize" our message without too much dissent from within the party itself.

* 5 out of 6 per cent of the moderate independents did anyway.

Democrats are sounding like hempsters. The hempsters can show polls that the American people support the medical use of marijuana.

Although the hempsters have a clear message, they can't mobilize their constituency and get them to the polls. It's the hard count that wins elections--not polls.

On the other hand, Democrats have an identified constituency, but their message is giving an uncertain sound. Is Obama and Hillary now pandering to the religious right? Kerry did too and look where it got him.

Democrats need to give their constituency a clear message that they are the party of American values. The Democratic Party is the party of fairness and liberty and justice for all.

Democrats need to let it be known that they are the party that advocates the Jeffersonian principle that the care of human life and happiness and not their destruction is the first and only object of good government.

Democrats need to make it clear that they are the party of good government and human life and happiness.