Poll: Wisconsin likes Bush

President George W. Bush enjoys wide backing in the Badger state, says a new poll conducted by the University of Wisconsin Survey Center.

Bush’s job rating is high, he is viewed favorably by the population overall, and whatever doubts there may have been about the 2000 election, he would do quite well now if there were some way of “redoing” that election.

The center surveyed 524 randomly selected state residents by telephone during June 8-17. The poll was financed by private funds made available by the UW–Madison Chancellor’s Office and University Communications, with the media sponsorship of the Capital Times.

G. Donald Ferree, Jr., associate director for public opinion research at survey center, outlined the key findings as follows:

• Those surveyed give Bush strong marks on his job performance. Two-thirds rate him either excellent (25 percent) or good (44 percent) while three in 10 choose one of the two lower marks, either fair (22 percent) or poor (8 percent).

Comparing the views of selected groups, men are slightly more positive than women, with more rating him excellent and fewer choosing good. Partisanship shows a clear relationship. Just over four in 10 among Democrats rate Bush as good or better, which proportion rises to seven in 10 among Independents and reaches 19 out of 20 among Republicans. Higher ratings are more prevalent among older age groups.

In comparison, when respondents were asked to rate Bush’s predecessor, Bill Clinton, on the same scale, just under half give him grades of excellent (9 percent) or good (38 percent), while just over half pick fair (30 percent) or poor (22 percent).

Demographic patterns tend to be the opposite of those for Bush, with women thinking more highly of Clinton than men, Democrats more than Republicans, and younger respondents, are especially pro-Clinton. At the individual level, just about half of all respondents rate Bush higher than Clinton. The remainder of respondents split roughly evenly between those who rated them at the same point in the scale, and those who placed Clinton at a higher level.

• Bush was also included, along with other prominent politicians in a series of questions asking respondents whether they had a favorable or unfavorable impression of each. Bush led the pack in terms of both familiarity (the proportion willing to come down on one side or the other) at 91 percent, and ratio of favorable to unfavorable mentions (74 percent-17 percent). This held across a variety of demographic and political groups defined by age, gender, and partisanship, but only among self-described Democrats among whom Bush has a 50 percent-37 percent favorability score, did he fail to find onesidedly positive views.

• Overall job ratings tell only part of the story, since respondents may relate to leaders both in terms of their personal characteristics and the policies they espouse. Respondents were asked specifically how they felt about Bush on both dimensions.

By far the greatest proportion, 64 percent, both like the person and support his policies. Only about one in eight took the doubly negative position of disliking Bush as a person and opposing his policies. Just under one in 10 took either of the “mixed” positions (e.g. like personally but oppose policies or dislike personally but support them.

Overall, three in four liked Bush personally. Only partisanship showed clear group differences, with the proportion liking Bush rising from just over half among Democrats, to three in four among Independents, to almost unanimity among GOP backers. A generally similar pattern obtained if one looked just at how respondents fell on the policy dimension. Bush enjoys substantial reservoirs of goodwill on both dimensions among very different groups.

• Overall, just over half (54 percent) say they believe the Bush Administration’s policies are helping the country, dwarfing the roughly one in 10 (11 percent) who feel they are hurting it. Three in 10 (30 percent) felt policies were not making much difference one way or the other.

• If one looks at the impact of Bush’s policies on the individual level (helping or hurting “people like you”), six in 10 (58 percent) overall do not feel there is much personal impact one way or the other. Among those who do see an impact, those who think people like them are helped outnumber those who feel themselves hurt by a five to two (26 percent-15 percent) margin.

Men and women are quite similar as groups. The balance swings from weakly negative among Democrats to balance among Independents to strong positive among Republicans. Among the latter group, those believing they are personally helped are of the same size as those believing the impact is neutral, among all other groups, the sense that the policies are personally neutral is the dominant one. The middle age groups are most positive, those at the top and bottom are similar to one another.

• When respondents were asked how they had voted in the 2000 election, Bush “wins” with just under half (45 percent) claiming to have backed him. Gore garners three in ten (29 percent), while he actually won the state. It should be mentioned that it is a long noted phenomenon for survey respondents to “overremember” voting for the winner, especially when sentiment toward him or her is positive, so this question can sometimes be used as an indication to present assessment as well as literally recalling past behavior.

When respondents were asked explicitly how they would cast their ballots “if you had it to do all over again,” Bush “wins” even more handily, by a margin of some 55 percent-27 percent over Gore. To be sure, he garners the support of relatively few Democrats (18 percent compared to Gore’s 65 percent), but outdistances the former Vice-President by more than two to one among Independents (55 percent-20 percent) and holds almost all (96 percent) of Republicans.

Results from this survey have a “margin of error” of a little over +/- 4 percent. This means that, had the survey included every eligible adult in Wisconsin, there is only a one in 20 chance that the answers would differ by more than that in either direction from what has been reported. Results based on subgroups are subject to a larger margin of error.