A Year Before ’08 Election, Public’s Theme is Discontent
Decade-high discontent marks the political landscape a year before the 2008 election, with economic worries compounding the public’s war weariness, deep dissatisfaction with the sitting president – and growing disapproval of the Democratic-led Congress.
Seventy-four percent of Americans in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll say the country’s headed in the wrong direction, the most since the government shut down in a contentious budget battle in early 1996. And while George W. Bush remains at his career low in job approval, he now has company: A year after they won control of the House and Senate, approval of the Democrats in Congress has fallen to its lowest since 1995.
At play are two of the most powerful forces in politics: an unpopular war and economic anxiety. On Iraq, 63 percent of Americans continue to say the war was not worth fighting. And at home, nearly two-thirds rate the economy negatively, with nearly seven in 10 seeing some likelihood of a recession in the year ahead.
See the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll at <http://abcnews.go.com/PollingUnit/story?id=3813959&page=1>.
PDF version with charts and full questionnaire at <http://abcnews.go.com/images/PollingUnit/1050a1ElectionYear-Out.pdf>.