Now I know that the polls are totally bogus....

[whistle]

Polls listed chronologically.

...How can Bush's job approval numbers be going up when the guy is not in Washington doing his job being president, he is out campaigning on one of the worst records of presidential performance in the last 86 years (Herbert Hover in 1932 I believe did a pretty bad job as president even though polls were not being done with any consistency then). I believe it's Bush's ads, the "left leaning" media and his administration spin masters who are able to maintain a perception among certain sectors of the American public that Bush's job performance as president. What do the rest of you DU'ers think, not of Bush's performance per say, but are the various national polls really an accurate gauge of job performance evaluation of this president or simply a measure of the publics perception of how the president is doing? Here is a sample of the latest results and a link to the site:


Time Poll conducted SRBI Public Affairs. July 20-22, 2004. N=1,000 registered voters nationwide. MoE ± 3.


"In general, do you approve or disapprove of the way President Bush is handling his job as president?"


....................Approve Disap-
..............................prove..Unsure

.7/20-22/04......50%....47%.....4%


<more> http://www.pollingreport.com/BushJob.htm

[opihimoimoi]

1. It can only mean 1/2 Americans are blind to the truth...50% are delusional

Damn.

[MoonGod]

2. They're only intended to measure public perception...

... and whether or not they successfully do that is a whole other conversation.

But they are not intended to be a measure of the president's actual job performance. I'm not even quite sure how one could definitively measure that.

As a little aside, you know what pisses me off about these polls. My possible responses about Bush are Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor.

POOR!! That's as bad as I can put down?! I want "Terrible" at LEAST! I mean, we have Excellent, right? Ugh. There. I've vented.

[exgop]

3. Oh, that's an easy one...

"How can Bush's job approval numbers be going up when the guy is not in Washington doing his job being president, he is out campaigning on one of the worst records of presidential performance in the last 86 years?"

Because he's good at campaigning and rotten at being president. If he were in Washington doing his job, he would be making his record worse. This way, he's not only stopped doing damage (by NOT working), he's doing the one thing he's good at: campaigning.

[Robbien]

4. Polls are a business

Media outlets want political ad revenue. They have their polls keep the two candidates close to even to make sure the parties keep running ads.

[Wright Patman]

5. Hey, good point

I think of myself as one of the most cynical people on the planet, particularly when it comes to the media and politics, but even I never thought of that one.

I agree. Gotta have a "horserace" even if one of them is, by all appearances other than the manufactured polls, just about ready for the glue factory.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

6. Polls are easy to rig

It all depends upon the questions asked, and how they are phrased. They can be worded so that the majority of people will give the answer is desired by whoever ordered the poll.