President Bush's spokesman Wednesday shrugged off a poll showing Bush's re-election support has fallen below 50 percent for the first time, saying, "Polls go up, polls go down."
The Washington Post-ABC News poll completed Monday night also showed increasing unhappiness with how the president is handling the economy.In the poll of 1,536 randomly selected Americans, 47 percent of those questioned said they were inclined to vote for Bush next year, while 37 percent said they would back the unknown Democratic nominee.
That compared with last March, at the end of the Persian Gulf war, when Bush led the Democratic candidate by 68 percent to 20 percent.
"Polls go up, polls go down," said Bush's press secretary, Marlin Fitzwater. "Polls never mean anything. The American people know George Bush is doing a great job."
The White House routinely dismisses polls that produce findings unfavorable to the president, but does not hesitate to cite the favorable ones - as when Bush touted the recent polls showing overwhelming national support for his Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas.
In the new poll, only 37 percent said they approved of Bush's handling of the economy, down 5 points from a month-earlier poll, and 70 percent agreed with the statement that Bush "spends too much time on foreign affairs and not enough on problems in this country." In September, 66 percent agreed with that statement.
Bush's overall approval rating remained high at 65 percent, down from 69 percent in September. The poll found 69 percent approving Bush's efforts in international relations.
But 51 percent agreed with the statement: "After four years of George Bush, we need a president who can set the nation in a new direction." Another 44 percent agreed that "we need to keep the country moving in the direction George Bush has been taking us."
Those who believed the economy was getting worse increased from 41 percent in September to 56 percent, and just 7 percent said they thought that most Americans are better off now than before Bush took office.
The margin of error in the poll was plus or minus three percentage points.