MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

CNN shows Bush as most unpopular US president

Bush the most unpopular US president according CNN survey

A new opinion poll from CNN released Thursday shows that 71% of the US public disapproves of President George Bush handling of his job, making him the most unpopular in modern US history.

"No president has ever had a higher disapproval rating in any CNN or Gallup Poll; in fact, this is the first time that any president's disapproval rating has cracked the 70 percent mark" said Keating Holland, CNN's polling director. However Bush's approval rating, which stands at 28%, "remains better than the all-time lows set by Harry Truman and Richard Nixon [22% and 24% respectively], but even those two presidents never got a disapproval rating in the 70s" added Holland. CNN Senior Political Analyst Bill Schneider was quoted saying that Bush "is more unpopular than Richard Nixon was just before he resigned from the presidency in August 1974". "The previous all-time record in CNN or Gallup polling was set by Truman, 67% disapproval in January 1952". President Nixon's disapproval rating in August 1974 stood at 66%. The poll also indicates that support for the war in Iraq has never been lower. Thirty percent of those questioned favored the war, while 68% opposed it. The numbers on the Iraq war come on the five-year anniversary of Bush's "Mission Accomplished" moment on board the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, when he proclaimed that "major combat operations in Iraq have ended." According to CNN the record-low support for the war could be one reason behind the president's unpopularity, but it probably is not the only one. "Support for the war, the assessment of the economy and approval of Mr. Bush are all about the same -- bad," Schneider said. The CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll was conducted by telephone from Monday through Wednesday among 1,008 adult Americans. The poll's sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.