MaxedOutMama
Wednesday, November 24, 2004
Suprising numbers
I found these numbers highly interesting (from the poll as reported in USA Today). I'm not surprised by George Bush's job approval rating being at 55%, or his personal approval being at 60%. Just the ending of the election news-and-opinion cycle would tend to give him an upward boost.
But if you keep scrolling down, you get to some really odd-looking results. The Republican party has a favorable rating from 66%, with 34% of that highly favorable. The Democratic party has a favorable rating from 58% of the respondents, with only 22% of that landing in the highly favorable category. I would have attributed these numbers to aura of victory or defeat, except for some that followed.
Question 37 has 64% thinking the church or organized religion has too little MORAL influence in America, while in Question 36, 48% thought the church or organized religion has too much POLITICAL influence, with only 40% thinking it had too little. Question 32 lists 53% of the population approving either civil unions or marriages for same-sex couples. Question 29 has 63% in favor of allowing openly gay or lesbian men or women to serve in the military. It doesn't seem as if we are falling into a theocracy, or in any danger of it.
I'm not going to cite all the Iraq-related questions, except to say that people's views are not blindly optimistic there. 47% think it was a mistake, and 74% of the population is very or fairly worried about it. Only 42% think the results of the January elections will be widely accepted in Iraq. So I asked myself, where is Bush's support coming from?
63% of those surveyed were at least somewhat confident that Bush would make good choices for his cabinet, and 61% were somewhat or very confident that Bush would make good choices in picking Supreme Court justices. 64% of the respondents thought hat that the state of moral values in this country was getting worse. 55% thought our government was trying to do to many things that should be left to individuals and businesses.
The overal picture I get from this survey is that people aren't unrealistically optimistic, but that a majority of the people in this country approve of the basic direction in which Bush has tried to move. This is not good news for the Democratic party, but it's also not good news for hard-core conservatives. People want compromise solutions, and they look like they are favoring market solutions.
It also looks to me as if the general population may be far more ready to accept that we have some difficult problems to face than the political class has been to talk about those problems. The Democratic party probably can't afford to take a blindly obstructionist stance against Bush's proposals without offering workable solutions of their own. It is going to be an interesting two years, for sure.
But if you keep scrolling down, you get to some really odd-looking results. The Republican party has a favorable rating from 66%, with 34% of that highly favorable. The Democratic party has a favorable rating from 58% of the respondents, with only 22% of that landing in the highly favorable category. I would have attributed these numbers to aura of victory or defeat, except for some that followed.
Question 37 has 64% thinking the church or organized religion has too little MORAL influence in America, while in Question 36, 48% thought the church or organized religion has too much POLITICAL influence, with only 40% thinking it had too little. Question 32 lists 53% of the population approving either civil unions or marriages for same-sex couples. Question 29 has 63% in favor of allowing openly gay or lesbian men or women to serve in the military. It doesn't seem as if we are falling into a theocracy, or in any danger of it.
I'm not going to cite all the Iraq-related questions, except to say that people's views are not blindly optimistic there. 47% think it was a mistake, and 74% of the population is very or fairly worried about it. Only 42% think the results of the January elections will be widely accepted in Iraq. So I asked myself, where is Bush's support coming from?
63% of those surveyed were at least somewhat confident that Bush would make good choices for his cabinet, and 61% were somewhat or very confident that Bush would make good choices in picking Supreme Court justices. 64% of the respondents thought hat that the state of moral values in this country was getting worse. 55% thought our government was trying to do to many things that should be left to individuals and businesses.
The overal picture I get from this survey is that people aren't unrealistically optimistic, but that a majority of the people in this country approve of the basic direction in which Bush has tried to move. This is not good news for the Democratic party, but it's also not good news for hard-core conservatives. People want compromise solutions, and they look like they are favoring market solutions.
It also looks to me as if the general population may be far more ready to accept that we have some difficult problems to face than the political class has been to talk about those problems. The Democratic party probably can't afford to take a blindly obstructionist stance against Bush's proposals without offering workable solutions of their own. It is going to be an interesting two years, for sure.
