It’s an American Research Group poll, which I’ve not been impressed with in the past. 19% also marks a 15% approval drop since January and an 18% increase in disapproval. That is to say, 44% of his base supporters changed their mind over the last month as well as three out of seven undecided finally deciding that Bush is a bad president. While I don’t expect his numbers to be getting any better, this sort of change smells extremely fishy to me, and I’d wait for more polls to come out before getting too excited about this one.

Unless there was a story about Bush having an affair with a male Planned Parenthood doctor that I just missed.

If, however, the 19% turns out to be true, then there’s no reason not to impeach him, given his 77% disapproval rating. Even the Republicans would be in support.

Posted by Ben C. on 21 February 2008 @ 10am

the pitiful reality of these spineless congressional democrats continues to astound me.

He should have been impeached years ago. Poll numbers have nothing to do with it. This isn’t about the most unpopular president, this is about the worst president.

What a bunch of sheep!

Posted by ajc on 21 February 2008 @ 11am

I didn’t think he could break the 20% ceiling.

“Ceiling” kinda implies that it’s going up. I would’ve said “Floor”.

Posted by TrvlnMn on 21 February 2008 @ 1pm

I wonder who the 1 percent of Democrats could be? Democrats who have been in a coma for the past seven years, so their conservative Christian caregivers agreed to take the poll for them?

Posted by Megan on 21 February 2008 @ 2pm

Ben C.,

You might be able to attribute this to both a sudden worsening in people’s perception of the economic situation and to the fact that since the beginning of January most of the country has started to think about politics again. There are very large numbers of people (none of whom read this blog) who don’t ever really pay any attention to politics or politicians except for around election time. So it’s election time and they’re thinking about politics maybe for the first time in the last year and deciding that here we are at the end of Bush’s second term and the country has pretty well been going to shit after all.

Posted by Jackson Landers on 21 February 2008 @ 2pm

Jackson,

It’s certainly possible, though I still think it’s improbable. The scenario you give would to me be a fine explanation for a downward trend, but these are numbers that just fell off a cliff. As I said, it just smells fishy, especially given my distrust of ARG’s polls (which I can’t document, so please don’t take my word on that). One explanation I’ve seen is that this particular poll questioned respondents on economic issues before asking about Bush, which might put people in a more negative frame of mind (http://theboard.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/21/bushs-popularity-a-really-new-low/).

I’ll save my schadenfreude about this for after multiple polls have confirmed an approval rating around 20%. I fully expect that even if this poll is total bunk, we’ll see things sliding that way as Bush closes out his second term, and wish it had come sooner.

Posted by Ben C. on 22 February 2008 @ 11am