The new Time/SRBI poll, coming out on the heels of the very negative Gallup and Pew polls, has more bad news for President Bush.
Bush’s approval rating in the poll has declined to 48 percent, 5 points down from a week ago. Time/SRBI tends to run high on Bush approval relative to other public polls and that 48 percent rating is is the lowest for Bush they have ever recorded.
His rating on the economy is down to 42 percent, also his lowest ever in this poll. His rating on the Iraq situation is now 44 percent and even his rating on handling the war on terrorism is down to 52 percent, another low for this poll.
But his worst rating by far is on Social Security, which has sunk to 31 percent, with 58 percent disapproval–a rating even worse than in other recent public polls.
Turning to the Terri Schiavo case, the public says, by 59-35, that they agree with a Florida judge’s decision to uphold the removal of Schiavo’s feeding tube. As in previous polls, support for removing Schiavo’s tube extends across the spectrum, including even the highly religiously observant.
The public judges the political intervention into the Schiavo case quite harshly. By 75-20, they say it wasn’t right for Congress to intervene in the case and, by 70-24, that it wasn’t right for Bush to intervene in the case. Moreover, by 65-25, the public believes Bush’s intervention in the case had more to do with politics than values.
The public’s probably right about that–and, based on these and other data, it would now appear Bush made a very substantial mistake in doing so.