THE ZOGBY POLL

Unpersuasive piece by Byron York about the seriousness of Bush’s slide in the Zogby poll. Zogby’s polls are out of kilter with everyone else’s which show a pretty stable positive rating for Bush in the mid to upper 50s. Zogby shows a positive rating now of only 47.2 percent. The reason for the discrepancy is the way the poll is structured, rating responses not on a positive-negative scale, but divvied up between “excellent,” “good,” “fair,” and “poor.” If you split these down the middle, with good and excellent being positive, and fair and poor being negative, you get a slow slide downwards, especially among those who once thought Bush’s performance was ‘good’ and now think it’s only ‘fair.’ But, of course, this depends on what the meaning of the word “fair” is. Personally, I don’t think it’s that negative a judgment. It’s a neutral sentiment leaning toward approval. (Zogby might try testing the term ‘mediocre,’ a neutral term leaning toward disapproval, for better results). If you put “fair” in the ‘positive’ column, then Bush’s ratings have gone from 78 percent in June to 80.8 percent in July. If you put it in a neutral column, and take it out of measurement altogether, and subtract those who think Bush is doing a poor job from those who think he’s doing a good or excellent job, then you get a net positive count of 29.9 in June and 29.9 in July. Pretty stable, huh? I’m not saying Bush doesn’t have things to worry about, especially his terrible job at countering the liberal media and his outreach to suburban moderates, but the Zogby hype strikes me as overdone.