by: Chris Bowers, Open Left
The Roper Center at the University of Connecticut is an excellent archive for poll junkies, featuring polling archives that go back much further than Polling Report (not that polling report isn’t great). the coup de grace (I hope I spelled that right) at the Roper Center is their archive of every public, presidential approval poll ever conducted via telephone. It even dates back to the 1930’s where you can review FDR’s approval ratings from August, 1937 forward.
The reason I bring up this archive is because today Bush reached a historic milestone. His current disapproval rating in the latest Gallup poll, 66%, equals Richard Nixon’s highest Gallup disapproval rating of 66%, registered the week before he resigned from office. Back then, Gallup was the only organization conducting presidential approval polls, and thus the Gallup poll is always taken as the gold standard for historical comparisons. this figure also puts Bush only 1% away from the all-time highest disapproval, set by Harry Truman in early January, 1952.
(Original Article)