Bush's Job Approval Rating

Bush gave his State of the Union speech last night, and I think that it is worth noting his job approval rating on the day of that speech. (I am going to skip criticizing the speech for now because he did not really say anything new that I have not criticized before.)

I have noticed a tendency by some in the media for only citing one poll at a time in the job approval ratings, but I like to take all the recent numbers and find the average because I feel that is the most accurate rating that you can get short of polling everyone in the country (which would be impractical).

So from PollingReport.com, here are the five most recent approval/disapproval ratings:

Source_____Approve/Disapprove
CNN_______34/63
CBS_______28/64
NBC/WSJ___35/60
ABC/WP____33/65
Newsweek___31/62

average___32.2/62.8

I have been paying close attention to Bush's job approval numbers since 2004, and I think that these averages represent the lowest approval average and the highest disapproval average I have seen. It is also worth noting that the CBS poll has produced a new low for a single poll's approval rating: 28%. This beats the previous low of 29% by The Harris Poll in May 2006. It is also worth noting that the job approval numbers have decreased since Bush announced his escalation plan for Iraq.

The 32.2% job approval average is interesting in that it shows that less than a third of Americans still support Bush's handling of his job as President. Bush is now in Nixon territory with these low job approval ratings. He is ripe for impeachment. I suspect that Bush will soon be paraphrasing Nixon by saying, "I am not a war criminal."