Bush Approval: Challenging Nixon

Mystery Pollster is a blog on Political Polling. Today's post is about State of the Union polling. This is what to expect: "First, CNN/USAToday/Gallup and perhaps CBS News will conduct instant reaction polls among speech watchers who will express great enthusiasm for the President and his address. Second, the traditional poll of all Americans conducted in the weeks following the speech will show little or no 'bump' in the President's job approval ratings."

Apparently the people that watch are predisposed to like Bush because those that don't like him, simply don't watch. What a surprise. So any poll of those that watched the speech is skewed from the general population.

But the fun statistic is the graph below (click it for full size) showing approval ratings of Presidents Nixon, Clinton, and W. over their presidencies. With current approval ratings at 42%, Bush isn't doing so good. The circled data is Clinton's State of the Union (SOTU) speech.