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On 06 Nov 2003 01:10:07 GMT, (Bobsprit) wrote:

Faced with the unexpected prospect
of running against George Bush during an economic
recovery which has shown remarkable gains

The economy has made ZERO gains. It's all losses. All companies
showing profits did so by closing plants and cutting jobs and
benefits.
Marist poll show a 17% dip in bush approval ratings. How bad is that?
Well, bush people like to say his rating is still high, but the fact
is that the rating is WITHOUT another candidate in the wings. That
means a large amount of Americans want Bush out regardless of who runs
against him!

RB

When you get away from the East and West Coasts, people do like
President Bush--and young people even more. It's the liberal kooks, the
clinically depressed, and the underemployed that don't like him. Young
people tend to be optimistic, so in raw numbers they're more likely to
be pro-Bush. That's my theory.

two wheels

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http://www.hillnews.com/york/102903.aspx

News flash: College students like President Bush
by Byron York
October 29, 2003

Here's a question: Given the focus of the anti-war movement on college
campuses, and given the relentless liberalism of the professoriate, and
given the popularity of books such as Al Franken's Lies and the Lying
Liars Who Tell Them, what do college students think of George W. Bush?

The answer: They like him.

A new poll by Harvard's Institute of Politics found that 61 percent of
students give the president a positive job approval rating - making
Bush more popular on campus than in the country at large.

"Defying conventional wisdom, a new poll of America's college students
finds they are significantly more supportive of President Bush than the
general public," said a slightly surprised-sounding Institute of
Politics press release.

The release quoted institute head Dan Glickman, the former secretary of
agriculture in the Clinton administration: "The conventional view that
the majority of America's college students are Democratic and that they
care little about politics is clearly disproved by this new poll."

In addition to his fairly high approval rating, Bush's disapproval
rating, 38 percent, was lower than in the public at large; an ABC
News/Washington Post poll, taken at about the same time found 53
percent approval of Bush versus 42 percent disapproval.

The college pollsters also asked whether students would vote for Bush
against a generic Democrat next year. Thirty-nine percent chose Bush,
versus 34 percent for the Democrat

In addition, the Harvard team found that more students considered
themselves Republicans than Democrats - 31 percent to 27 percent. (The
largest group, 38 percent, regarded itself as independent.)

Then pollsters asked those students who identified themselves as
Democrats which candidate they preferred if a primary election were
held today.

A landslide for Howard Dean, right?

Wrong. The winner, with 17 percent of the vote, was Sen. Joseph
Lieberman (D-Conn.) - the most conservative Democrat in the field.

Dean came in second with 16 percent, followed by retired Gen. Wesley
Clark, with 9 percent.

After that - and this is true - came Al Sharpton, with 8 percent.
Reverend Al beat Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), who had 6 percent, Sen.
John Edwards (D-N.C.), who had 5 percent, former ambassador Carol
Moseley Braun, who had 4 percent, and Rep. Dick Gephardt (D-Mo.), who
had 3 percent.

If Sharpton had an actual campaign, he might have made some use of this
news. As it was, his website, al2004.com, didn't seem to notice.

And needless to say, the congressman from Missouri hasn't been crowing
about the poll, which might have been headlined "Students Have
Near-Zero Interest In Gephardt." Apparently no one told them about the
Gephardt surge.

On the issue of Iraq, the Harvard pollsters found mixed feelings. When
researchers asked whether students "support or oppose the United States
having gone to war with Iraq," 59 percent strongly or somewhat
supported the war, while 37 percent opposed.

Then pollsters asked whether students thought that members of the Bush
administration "have been telling the truth, usually telling the truth
but hiding some things, or have they been mostly not telling the truth"
about Iraq.

The vast majority, 66 percent, chose the "usually telling the truth but
hiding some things" category. Twenty-one percent said the
administration was mostly not telling the truth, while 12 percent said
the administration has been telling the entire truth.

When asked whether their trust in the president had gone up or down in
the past year, 32 percent said it had gone down. Eighteen percent said
it had gone up, while 49 percent said it had stayed the same - a
combined total of 67 percent whose faith in the president has been
unaffected by the war.

In addition to finding solid support for Bush, the pollsters also found
that students, unlike many other Democrats, actually care about
national security and terrorism. Eleven percent of students told the
pollsters they worried about terrorism, making it the
third-most-important concern.

While not terribly high, that number stands in stark contrast to the
results of a recent Democracy Corps poll, which found that Democrats in
the early-voting and caucus states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South
Carolina worried virtually not at all about terrorism.

On another terrorism-related topic, the poll found that students don't
seem to share Democratic concerns that the USA Patriot Act had eroded
civil liberties and that Attorney General John Ashcroft is "shredding"
the Constitution. Just 2 percent worried about that.

Finally, the poll strikes one small cautionary note about the wonders
of the Internet as a political tool.

Yes, some candidates have raised tons of money on the Net, but the poll
suggests that not every Web effort is bearing fruit.

When pollsters asked, "Have you ever read or participated in a
presidential campaign blog?" 96 percent of students said no.

Apparently, they've learned to like George W. Bush the old-fashioned
way.

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