Who Are the 28%?

Scott Horton writes:

"Bush Support Tanking": The Wall Street Journal reports that public support for President Bush continues its free fall. It’s now at 28% approval—-the lowest of his presidency. NBC News reports that the American public agrees with Harry Reid, and disagrees with David Broder, by a very wide margin-—55 percent saying the Iraq War is lost, and 36% expressing hope that it might be winnable...

Comments

[Bruce Moomaw]

Actually, that 28% doesn't contain any of those who say he's doing a "fair" job -- just those who still think he's "excellent" or "good". Force people who rate a politician as "fair" to say flat-out whether they approve or disapprove of him, and at least 1/3 of them will give him a positive rating. So the Harris Poll (Zogby uses the same trick) is overstating his unpopularity -- which, in all the other polls I've seen for the last few months, seems to have levelled off at about 64-36 negative. (Which, of course, is quite low enough.)

[Barry]

Brad, go to any right-wing blog, and read the comments. They're from Bizarro World. There are people who believe that we've been winning all along/we're only not winning due to the media opposing the war/this plan (the surge) will win it for us.

[save_the-rustbelt]

As a Republican I hate to say it, but the 28% is largely the slobbering dittohead wing of the party. Not real conservatives, just dittoheads. Also, some patriotic older folks and good-hearted people from the "support the troops" lobby. But mostly dittoheads.

My late father-in-law, a WWII vet and a real conservative to the core, hated Bush with a fiery passion. He knew what dying in the sand of a foreign country meant. He had no awe for war. I'm sorry he didn't live to see Bush leave office.

[ajay]

Actually, it's 27%; but you know these polls have a margin of error.

"But I wonder what his base is --"

Tyrone: "27%."

John: "... you said that immmediately, and with some authority."

Tyrone: "Obama vs. Alan Keyes. Keyes was from out of state, so you can eliminate any established political base; both candidates were black, so you can factor out racism; and Keyes was plainly, obviously, completely crazy. Batshit crazy. Head-trauma crazy. But 27% of the population of Illinois voted for him. They put party identification, personal prejudice, whatever ahead of rational judgement. Hell, even like 5% of Democrats voted for him. That's crazy behaviour. I think you have to assume a 27% Crazification Factor in any population."

http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2005/10/lunch-discussions-145-crazification.html

[MattF]

And as Bush descends from the low 30's to the high 20's... one can only wonder about the one-out-of-twenty people who are just now changing their minds.

[baileyman]

This is the place to find the best description of the 28%, the high right wing authoritarians:

http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

[me]

I am sorry to say but most of them are here in Georgia.

[Aaron]

Support for Bush is not 'in free fall'. it is gradually eroding as those "faith based" die hard loyalists are gradually picked off by the clear realization that they are being lied to.
What will it take to reduce that number to near zero? I think if every Republican leader ate a live baby on national tv, most of those would still be left and would rationalize it in one of two ways:
- those babies were liberal/black/brown/illegal/terrorists and thus deserved it and look at how tough and manly the republicans are., and
- its all just a scam by the MSM. like bad news coming out of Iraq.

[PJ on WI]

I come face to face with the diehard winger mentality where I work most days. The commenters above mostly have it right, but I'd add a few ingredients to spice it up a little more. One is that the hatred of Democrats and liberals is deeply ingrained and goes back at least as far as Viet Nam. It's almost instinctive. They are unwilling to concede even now that the Viet Nam War was unwinnable, just as they are likewise unwilling to concede that Iraq is unwinnable. Also, there is often some barely-disguised racism and hidden nostalgia for Jim Crow. (Think Trent Lott and his comments about Thurmond. Or think about the seemingly growing popularity of the Confederate flag.) And, worst of all, there is an indifference to mayhem among innocent bystanders, especially among foreigners.

Oh, and the slaughter at VA Tech could have been prevented if all of the students carried guns.

This isn't the right place for involved strategy discussions, but I do think that the Ailes/Limbaugh/Rove axis--now there's an axis of evil--has figured out how to insulate this mindset from influences they don't want it to have. I have a feeling in my guts that this country will never be really sane and safe until this worldview is confronted directly. It won't be pretty, but I don't think there is any real choice.

[James Killus]

The 28% poll is a statistical outlier. The running average of recent polls was on an uptick when the new polls came out. The new poll put it flat again. It's been running at 34% give or take a bit, for months.

See:

http://politicalarithmetik.blogspot.com/

Everything everyone has said here is true, but the Bush numbers are not in "free fall," which actually supports the view that only the die hards are left, and they are almost completely unshakable in their delusions and prejudices.

In other words, one-third of the U.S. electorate is deranged. Still, that's better than the 2/3 that were deranged only 4-5 years ago.

[Measure for Measure]

Who are the 28%?

The 28% are Republicans:

"Bush's approval rating among Republicans was 65 percent, while 10 percent of Democrats and 24 percent of independents approved."
http://www.mohavedailynews.com/articles/2007/04/26/news/state/state1.txt

A couple of months ago, Republican approval of Bush was at 75%, though if 65% is a little low, 75% was also a little high. Whether 2/3 - 3/4 of Republican are dittoheads is unclear to me: they appear to have some sort of infatuation, however.