The current poll is not a particularly auspicious one for President George W. Bush. His job approval rating is down to 49% -- the lowest rating of his administration by one point, and below the symbolic 50% level that is so important for an incumbent president seeking re-election. Bush's favorability rating is also at the lowest point of his administration. Just 52% of Americans have a favorable opinion of Bush as a person, well below his previous low-point of 60%, which he reached in August 2001 and again in October 2003.
Some of this negative view toward Bush is to be expected, given the high level of media focus on the Democrats in the midst of their primary season, and that the Democrats have been spending as much time criticizing Bush as they have each other.
Even though entrance and exit poll data in Iowa and New Hampshire suggest that the Iraq situation is not the top priority for voters this year, it is reasonable to assume that new revelations that there may not have been weapons of mass destruction in Iraq before the initiation of the war last March are most likely hurting Bush's image. His rating for handling the situation in Iraq dropped to 46% from the much higher early January rating of 61% that resulted from the capture of Saddam Hussein. The percentage of Americans who agree that the situation in Iraq was worth going to war over has -- for the first time -- dropped below 50%, to 49%. This latter rating is an important one; if Bush loses popular support for the basic premise of the war, he is going to be wide open to attacks from a candidate like Kerry who has some legitimacy based on his own wartime service in Vietnam.
Then there is the economy, which is a mixed bag of sorts in the eyes of the public. Fifty-two percent of Americans rate economic conditions as either "somewhat" or "very" good at the moment, which is still considerably higher than it was at most points last year. About two-thirds say that economic conditions will be good a year from now. But Bush's job approval rating for handling the economy has dropped to only 43%, the lowest rating of his administration, and that certainly has to be an ominous sign for the president at a time in which much of the economic news has been positive.
Considering all these factors, it is no surprise that Kerry beat Bush among likely voters, 53% to 46%, when the two were pitted against each other in a hypothetical general election trial heat in Gallup's weekend poll. (Edwards is essentially tied with Bush among likely voters in a similar trial heat question, while the president has a slight margin over both Clark and Dean.)
Importantly, Kerry is seen by Americans as better positioned to "make sure good jobs are available to all Americans." This is a key finding, given that the poll shows that Americans are more likely to select unemployment as the single most important economic issue facing the country than any of five other issues presented to them.
Still, with all of this news about Bush's relative weaknesses and Kerry's strengths, Republicans are likely to argue that what is happening to the Democrats at this time of year is in many ways quite similar to what happens to both parties after their summer conventions in an election year. All of the focus is on that party, and that party's candidate almost always gets a significant bounce in the polls. With all of the current media attention being focused on Democrats (Kerry was on the cover of Newsweek last week, and is on the cover of TIME this week), there may indeed be some validity to that argument.
Plus, the Republicans have essentially not yet begun to fight, and little of the vast sums of campaign contributions obtained by the Bush re-election campaign have yet been spent. When the time comes, these contributions will be used as the basis for a major campaign effort to focus on Bush's strengths and the weaknesses of the eventual Democratic nominee.
All in all, I would argue that there are three main indicators to watch as the political process plays itself out in the months ahead: Bush's job approval rating, the "worth going to war" measure on Iraq, and Bush's job approval rating on the economy. If all three remain below 50% in the late spring and summer, then the Bush re-election probabilities will have to be rated lower than they are now.