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ROCHESTER, NY - February
19 - The last two months have taken a heavy toll on the president's popularity,
but a modest 52% to 46% majority still gives him positive ratings. Two months
ago, almost two-thirds of all adults (64%) gave the president positive ratings
and only just over a third (35%) gave him negative ratings.
Other members of President Bush's cabinet, as well as the parties in Congress
and Congressional leaders, with one exception, have all seen a huge decline in
their popularity since the very high numbers we recorded soon after September
11, 2001. The one exception is Secretary of State Colin Powell. He still enjoys
an extraordinarily high degree of popularity, with 76% giving him positive ratings
and only 21% giving him negative ratings. These numbers are fractionally better
than they were in December 2002, perhaps because of his powerful recent testimony
to the United Nations Security Council.
While none of the other leaders has seen as big declines since last December as
President Bush, their numbers, nonetheless, are all down very substantially since
their peak soon after September 11.
Including results from the latest poll, we see the following declines in popularity
since soon after September 11, 2001:
- President Bush down from
88% to 52%, a decline of 36 points.
- Secretary of State Colin
Powell down from 88% to 76%, a decline of 12 points.
- Vice President Dick Cheney
down from 69% to 45%, a decline of 24 points.
- Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld down from 78% to 56%, a decline of 22 points.
- Attorney General John
Ashcroft down from 65% to 51%, a decline of 14 points.
- House Speaker Dennis Hastert
down from 52% to 33%, a decline of 19 points.
- The Republicans in Congress
down from 67% to 43%, a decline of 24 points.
- The Democrats in Congress
down from 68% to 38%, a decline of 30 points.
These are some of the results of The Harris Poll®, a nationwide telephone
survey conducted by Harris Interactive® among a sample of 1,010 adults, from
February 12 to 16, 2003.
The Importance of Issues
In December only 18% of all adults spontaneously replied "the war" when
asked to think of the most important issues for the government to address. This
was far below the economy at 34% but ahead of all the other issues.
Now, fully 38% say that "the war" is one of the two most important issues
for the government to address, virtually tied with the economy at 37%. Furthermore,
the next two issues mentioned most frequently are terrorism (16%) and Iraq/Saddam
Hussein (15%). Most other issues which were mentioned by substantial numbers of
people have declined in importance: those saying education are down from 11% to
5%, those saying homeland domestic security are down from 9% to 6%, those saying
employment/jobs are down from 8% to 5% and those saying health care are down from
10% to 8%.
These responses were not picked from any list. They are the unaided responses
of those surveyed.
Methodology
The Harris Poll® was conducted by telephone within the United States between
February 12 and 16, 2003 among a nationwide cross section of 1,010 adults (ages
18+). Figures for age, sex, race, education, number of adults and number of voice/telephone
lines in the household were weighted where necessary to align them with their
actual proportions in the population.
In theory, with a probability sample of this size, one can say with 95 percent
certainty that the results have a statistical precision of plus or minus 3 percentage
points of what they would be if the entire adult population had been polled with
complete accuracy. Unfortunately, there are several other possible sources of
error in all polls or surveys that are probably more serious than theoretical
calculations of sampling error. They include refusals to be interviewed (non-response),
question wording and question order, interviewer bias, weighting by demographic
control data and screening (e.g., for likely voters). It is impossible to quantify
the errors that may result from these factors.
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