And George W. Bush's approval rating drops to 30 percent, according to the latest CBS News poll. Two-thirds of Americans are optimistic about the new Congress. Consider this an open thread...

So much for the Bush boomlet.

Following an all-out offensive by the White House during August, President Bush's approval rating appeared to move up from the mid-30s up to the low-40s -- still bad, but not nearly as terrible as before. With the President's approval rating around 42 percent and perhaps trending upwards, endangered Republicans could at least consider beckoning him to come fundraise for him.

But now the tide is changing. Charlie Cook has a hunch "we may be about to see" an inflection point that "will shift momentum the opposite way and tilt the playing field back in favor of Democrats." Judging by the polling released a few hours after Cook's email hit my email box, it appears that his prediction is correct.

According to Opinion Research survey commissioned by CNN (.pdf), 39 percent of Americans approve of the job George W. Bush is doing as President, down three points in a week. The President's disapproval rating was up four points to 59 percent over that same time period. By a 58 percent to 41 percent margin, Americans believe "the Bush administration has deliberately misled the American public about how the war in Iraq is going." And on the generic congressional ballot queestion, the Democrats' lead is up seven points among Americans, though effectively unchanged among likely voters, who favor them by a 53 percent to 42 percent margin.

The Wall Street Journal and NBC News (.pdf) also commissioned polling over the weekend and found similar results. Like the CNN poll, the WSJ/NBC poll found President Bush's approval rating at 39 percent, down three points since September. These numbers reflect registered voters rather than all Americans. The WSJ/NBC survey did not ask a generic congressional ballot question, though it did bring up two interesting questions that show movement along those lines. Asked if "what you have seen and heard over the past few weeks made you feel more favorable, less favorable, or had no effect on your feelings about possibly having the Republicans maintain the majority in Congress," just 18 percent of voters responded more favorable while 41 percent indicated less favorable. When asked the same question about Democrats, registered voters were more favorable than less favorable by a 34 percent to 23 percent margin. Importantly, when registered voters were given arguments for and against the so-called "compromise" detainee legislation, 47 percent opposed it and 43 percent supported it.

Taken together, these polls indicate that things may indeed be beginning to move in a negative direction for both congressional Republicans and President Bush -- even as voters have yet to have time to fully digest the news and apparent cover-up of Mark Foley's immoral and potentially illegal dealings with teenage pages.

I've been watching with great interest the last several weeks as pundits, bloggers, columnists, some pollsters, and other "experts" have made a big deal of the "Bush bounce" that they clearly see in some poll numbers,  and how this points to a big shift in momentum back towards Republican candidates for Congress this fall.  With the flood of conflicting poll numbers out there, it does get difficult at times to separate the real trends from statistical noise. So what's going on here? Is the president's popularity really coming back, and more importantly, will this help Republicans stem their losses in November? And, almost as importantly, what is causing this upswing in presidential approval?
       

The SUSA Bush approval ratings for August are in, and he's at 38% approval, despite his much touted noninvolvement in foiling the latest terrorism plot.  

As usual, Utah and Idaho still give him high marks. Wyoming and Oklahoma give him lower net positives, and the other 46 states, including all 11 Confederate States, give him net disapproval.  As usual, the Northeast, together with Illinois and Michigan, give Bush his worst numbers.

More analysis below the fold.

For those who remain skeptical about the Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll released yesterday showing the Democrats maintaining a record 18-point generic congressional ballot lead, an Ipsos poll commissioned by the Associated Press seems to provide some confirmation.

On the generic question of whether voters would back the Democrat or Republican, 55 percent of registered voters chose the Democrat and 37 percent chose the Republican, a slight increase for Democrats from last month.

According to the AP/Ipsos poll, President Bush's approval rating has dropped all of the way down to it's May low of 33 percent. More worrisome for the White House and Republicans in Congress, close to one in five voters (19 percent) who supported Bush's reelection bid in 2004 plan to vote Democratic this fall. These numbers significantly undercut the internal Republican polling and memo obtained yesterday by US News (.pdf) which showed Republican voters excited to vote and prepared to support GOP candidates by an 84 percent to 6 percent margin.

This morning Gallup released polling showing President Bush's approval rating again at 40 percent, which will no doubt lead television pundits to once again proclaim a "Bush bounce" (overlooking, of course, the fact that Gallup tends to register a higher approval rating for the President than other polls and that the change from last week's poll is statistically insignificant). But taking a look inside of the numbers, it becomes clear that George W. Bush and his Republican allies in Congress are in a much more tenuous position than even the lackluster national numbers would indicate.

According to Gallup's latest survey, President Bush's approval rating is passable in the South at 49 percent, mediocre in the midwest at 40 percent but downright awful in both the West and the East at 35 percent and 31 percent, respectively. And while the President's approval rating is slightly above its 2006 average in the South and the Midwest, it is flat in the East and actually down in the West.

The split among regions of the country should cause great concern for the Republicans working to maintain control of the House this fall. Out of the 54 Republican-held seats ranked by the Cook Political Report (.pdf) to be competitive or potentially competitive, 15 come from the East, where President Bush is currently the weakest. So in the region in which the President is the greatest potential drag on Republican House candidates, there are enough pick-up opportunities for the Democrats to give them the US House. In the West, where George W. Bush's approval rating is similarly terrible and trending downward, there are another 12 GOP seats that are either already competitive or have the potential to be competitive (again, as ranked by Cook), giving the Democrats well more than enough possibilities in the regions least favorable to the President to pick up the House. And given the fact that the seats even outside of these two regions in which we already have head-to-head polling -- Kentucky's 4th district or Indiana's 2nd district for example -- show the Democratic candidate leading by a double-digit margin, it looks like this November could be great for House Democrats.

Bush's moderate short-term bounce following the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has disappeared according to the latest Opinion Dynamics poll commissioned by Fox News.

The president's approval rating dropped to 36 percent, down from 41 percent approval two weeks ago and 40 percent in mid-June. Bush lost ground this week among some key constituent groups, such as Republicans, whites and men. Overall, 53 percent of Americans say they disapprove.

According to PollingReport.com, this is the second of three major polls to show President Bush's approval rating to be in the mid-thirties rather than the low forties. So will the establishment media, led by Fox News (who paid for the poll), begin the "Bush is once again tumbling" drumbeat? I'm not holding my breath...

Surprisingly, as the poll shows President Bush's approval down, even among Republicans, and fewer Americans approving of Congress as a whole (25 percent, down from 29 percent in June), it also finds the Democrats' generic congressional ballot lead down a bit.

With Democrats preferred on most issues, as one might expect, they win the generic ballot test. By 42 percent to 34 percent, voters say they would support the Democratic candidate if the midterm election were held today. Their current 8-percentage point advantage is down from a 13-point edge last month (June 13-14).

However, Opinion Dynamics freely admits that it may be underestimating the Democrats' lead.

So far, interest in this year's elections is modest: 19 percent of voters say they are extremely interested and another 38 percent very interested. Democrats (23 percent) are slightly more likely than Republicans (17 percent) to say they are extremely interested.

"It is worth noting," observes Gorman, "that `interest' is one significant component of turnout scales. If Democrats are not only preferred but also turn out in higher numbers than Republicans, the current polls may actually be underestimating their strength." [emphasis added]

Given the anecdotal evidence that the Democrats' generic congressional ballot lead is actually holding in a number of House races around the country, it is at least somewhat encouraging to hear from the pollster hired by Fox that they might be "underestimating [the Democrats'] strength" heading into the midterm elections.

Well, not exactly.

In the latest survey from Time magazine, George W. Bush's approval rating sits at just 35 percent. When compared to a composite of several polls by Political Arithmetik which shows Bush's approval rating close to 39 percent, the Time poll indicates a real drop in President Bush's approval rating, right?

Well, no. Comparing different polls and cherry-picking data from different surveys isn't good math, so the results of the Time poll do not necessarily indicate that President Bush's approval rating is down four points.

But consider this, for one moment. Had the Time survey shown Bush's approval to be 43 percent instead of 35 -- in other words, had Time come out four points above the mean rather than four points below the mean -- can you not imagine CNN, Fox News and other outlets citing the poll as further evidence of a Bush bounce?