Gallup has released new data that have led to quite a bit of media comment and need to be sorted out. What are the key findings of this poll and how plausible are they?

The first thing to note is that the poll confirms the erosion of support for Bush's handling of the war on terror. Since that support is essentially the foundation on which Bush is building his re-election effort, bad news in this department, in my view, more than cancels out any good news for Bush on other fronts (which I'll get to in a moment).

According to the poll, Bush's approval rating on handling terrorism is now down to 58 percent, by far the lowest he's ever registered, and his disapproval is up to 39 percent, by far the highest he's ever registered. That's very significant and I find it hard to believe that the importance of this trend could be overlooked.....but it was, by USA Today, whose story on the poll by Richard Bendetto was headlined "Majority Supports Bush on Terrorism". Apparently the fact that his job rating on terrorism is still over 50 percent is deemed more important than the fact that it's falling rapidly.

The poll also finds the public: (1) endorsing the idea that Bush misled the public for political reasons (53-44); (2) saying that the Bush administration, based on pre-9/11 information, did not do all that could be done to prevent the 9/11 attacks (54-42); and (3) believing that the Bush administration is covering up something about its intelligence information concerning possible terrrorist attacks before 9/11 (53-41).

In addition, the public is now split on: (1) whether to believe Richard Clarke (44 percent) or the Bush administration (46 percent) on whether the administration paid enough attention to the terrorist threat before 9/11; (2) whether Bush after 9/11 paid enough attention to the al Qaeda threat (49 percent) or did not pay enough attention because he was too concerned about Saddam Hussein (46 percent); and (3) whether the Iraq war is part of the war on terrorism (50 percent) or an entirely separate military action (48 percent). (Note that the latter question returned a healthy 57-41 majority in favor of the Iraq war being a part of the war on terrorism when it was first asked last August.)

I'd say some very serious doubts have been raised here--doubts that threaten Bush's case for re-election in the most fundamental way.

The poll also finds Bush's ratings tanking in two domestic areas. On the economy, his rating is now 42 percent approval/55 percent disapproval--tied with last October for his lowest approval and highest disapproval ever.

On Medicare, his rating is now only 35 percent approval/55 percent disapproval. That's down 9 points on approval and up 14 points on disapproval just since the beginning of February.

In light of all this, it's amazing that the Gallup poll pegs Bush's approval rating at 53 percent, up 3 points since their last survey on March 8-11. Bush hasn't broken 50 in the other 4 national polls taken since mid-March, averaging 48 percent approval, 5 points below the Gallup rating.

It's also amazing that Gallup has Bush's approval rating on Iraq going up to 51 approval/47 percent disapproval, so that Bush is a net +4 on the issue. Newsweek, in contrast, who polled on two days (March 25-26) partially overlapping the Gallup poll (March 26-28), had Bush's approval rating on Iraq going down to 44 percent approval/50 percent disapproval for a net -6 on the measure.

Quite a contrast. Which brings us to Gallup's horse race result. Gallup has Bush ahead of Kerry of by 4 points (51-47) among LVs and by 3 points among RVs (49-46). This has occasioned considerable comment because this apparent Bush lead was measured at the end of a very tough week for the administration, with all the damage to Bush's image outlined above.

Several points are worth noting here. First, there are three national polls proximate in time to the Gallup poll, all of which show a slight Kerry lead: Rasumssen (1 point among LVs on 3/29, rising to 2 points today); Pew (1 point among RVs); and Newsweek (1 points among RVs).

Second, it is possible that the Gallup results are a bit of a pro-Bush outlier because of the composition of the sample. The Gallup report on this poll points out:

There has been no change over the past several weeks in the percentage of Republicans and Democrats supporting their own party's candidate, or in the candidate preferences of independents. Rather, the increase in support for Bush over the past few weeks comes mostly from an increase in the percentage of Americans identifying themselves as Republicans, and a comparable decline in self-identified Democrats. This could be the natural result of a shift in the political environment now that the Democratic primary season has concluded.

Maybe. Or it could be that, for whatever reason, Gallup happened to draw a disproportionately Republican sample. That would explain some of the anomalies in the poll that have just been outlined. It would also imply, of course, that the bad news for Bush is a bit worse than it appears in this poll.

Another possibility--not mutually exclusive with the pro-Republican sample possibility--is that Gallup caught a movement toward Bush on the heels of the administration's take-no-prisoners attack on Clarke, including Frist's "you sir are a scoundrel who may have committed perjury so let's declassify your earlier testimony", which Clarke initially did not comment on. Media coverage of Clarke's pushback on the administration ("sure, let's declassify everything") did not really hit until after the weekend, when Gallup's poll was over. That would be consistent with the data from the Rasmussen tracking poll which did show movement toward Bush on the days covered by the Gallup poll and then movement back toward Kerry afterward.

The final finding from the Gallup poll that is getting a big splash was in a USA Today story on TV ads producing a big Bush surge in battleground states. The story says that Bush has gone from 28 points down to Kerry in mid-February to a 6 point lead today in these states.

One would expect, given that the race has tightened, for Bush to have made the most progress where his ad spending was heaviest. But that's quite a turnaround and one wonders about its magnitude. First of all, if we're talking about the effects of the Bush ads, it would make more sense not to start with Gallup's mid-February poll, which showed Kerry ahead by 12 points among LVs--Gallup's biggest lead for Kerry and actually a bit of an outlier among other public polls.

It would make more sense instead to start with Gallup's early March poll, which was proximate to the start of the Bush campaign's heavy ad spending. We can proxy the Kerry lead at the time in these states by using the "purple state" breakout Gallup used in its report on that poll (see my March 10 post). In that breakout, Kerry was ahead by 16 points in the purple states, so the swing to today's 6 point Bush lead is not quite as dramatic.

And I even wonder about that. It's hard to find this movement toward Bush over the last three weeks in state polls that have been released in various battleground states. Given the magnitude of the shift implied by the Gallup data, you'd think these polls would be chock full of good news for Bush. But, by and large, they have not been.

So, in conclusion, I urge people to remain calm and focus on the many important ways in which Bush's case for re-election is being steadily undermined. Gallup's poll is, after all, only one among many public polls, despite the over-abundant media attention it tends to get. One has to consider Gallup's results in this context to get the full story.