Tuesday, October 18, 2005

Bush's 50 State Poll Numbers

SurveyUSA just released new poll numbers for Bush's job approval. Nationally, he's at 38 percent, pretty much in line with other recent surveys. More interesting is that they have numbers for all 50 states. If you use Bush's 51 percent in the 2004 election as a baseline, he's fallen 13 points in the last year. In 18 states, Bush's approval rating is now more than 13 points below his 2004 percentage, and 17 of them were states that he won. Michigan is the only state won by Kerry where Bush's approval rating has fallen more than the national average. The biggest drop was in Texas, where Bush's 42 percent approval rating is 19 points below the 61 percent he got in 2004. I guess loyalty isn't strong suit among Texans. Either that or the survey oversampled Katrina refugees. The second biggest drop (also 19 points) was in Kansas. Maybe Tom Frank's book has had an impact.

Conversely, Bush saw the smallest declines in states won by Kerry. In the seven states where Bush had only single digit drops, only two, were Kerry states. One one was Alaska and the other was Louisiana. I guess not all the ticked off Louisianan's are in Texas.

Anyway, with Bush's biggest drops coming from red states and the smallest drops coming from blue states, the result is the purple-ing of America. In 2004, the standard deviation in Bush's vote was 8.5. The standard deviation of his current approval rating is down to 7.4.

State2005 Approval2005 Disapproval_2004Change2004 Winner
Texas42%54%61%-19%Bush
Kansas43%54%62%-19%Bush
South Dakota41%56%60%-19%Bush
South Carolina40%58%58%-18%Bush
Tennessee40%57%57%-17%Bush
Arkansas38%58%54%-16%Bush
Indiana44%53%60%-16%Bush
North Carolina41%56%56%-15%Bush
Wyoming54%44%69%-15%Bush
Arizona40%55%55%-15%Bush
Michigan33%65%48%-15%Kerry
Oklahoma51%46%66%-15%Bush
Alabama48%49%62%-14%Bush
Missouri39%59%53%-14%Bush
Nebraska52%45%66%-14%Bush
North Dakota49%48%63%-14%Bush
Ohio37%61%51%-14%Bush
Kentucky46%50%60%-14%Bush
Nevada37%60%50%-13%Bush
Idaho55%44%68%-13%Bush
Wisconsin36%61%49%-13%Kerry
West Virginia43%55%56%-13%Bush
Delaware33%65%46%-13%Kerry
Virginia41%56%54%-13%Bush
Illinois32%66%44%-12%Kerry
Pennsylvania36%62%48%-12%Kerry
California32%65%44%-12%Kerry
New Jersey34%64%46%-12%Kerry
Connecticut32%66%44%-12%Kerry
Georgia46%52%58%-12%Bush
Iowa38%61%50%-12%Bush
New Hampshire37%61%49%-12%Kerry
Maine33%66%45%-12%Kerry
Mississippi48%48%59%-11%Bush
Florida41%58%52%-11%Bush
New Mexico39%58%50%-11%Bush
Utah61%36%72%-11%Bush
New York30%66%40%-10%Kerry
Montana49%49%59%-10%Bush
Maryland33%64%43%-10%Kerry
Vermont29%69%39%-10%Kerry
Colorado42%57%52%-10%Bush
Rhode Island29%70%39%-10%Kerry
Oregon38%59%47%-9%Kerry
Alaska52%44%61%-9%Bush
Massachusetts28%68%37%-9%Kerry
Louisiana48%49%57%-9%Bush
Minnesota39%58%48%-9%Kerry
Washington38%59%46%-8%Kerry
Hawaii39%54%45%-6%Kerry

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Part of the reason you're observing a larger decline in Bush states than in Kerry states is because you're looking at absolute declines. For example, it's mathematically possible to see a 29 point drop in approval in Utah between 2004 and now, but it's mathematically impossible to have seen a 29 point drop in Massachusetts (since Massachusetts was registering 28% approval in 2004).

If you calculate the relative change in approval you'll see that the declines are pretty evenly spread across the states. I've done that here.

Anonymous said...

Ooops. In 2004, Massachusetts was at 37%. Nonetheless, the point is still that you could very well expect larger absolute declines in states where the 2004 level was higher. Relative changes take into account differing bases.

Philip Klinkner said...

Robert--

Good point. I went back and ran the numbers to look to see what states saw the biggest % change from 2004. Red states still top the list. Texas is now #2 and Kansas is #5.

Phil

Charles Franklin said...

One clarification: the 2004 numbers are VOTE returns from 2004, right? Not "approval" measured by the SurveyUSA poll. As we discuss this we sometimes talk about change in "approval" but it isn't quite the same measure in 2004 and 2005.

The uniform decline that Robert points out also appears when we look at change in SurveyUSA POLL data between June and October of 2005. The results are here

In the shorter run of June to October, the fall in support is pretty much even across states.

Charles

Philip Klinkner said...

Charles--

Again a good point. See my most recent post on this.

Phil