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Approval Ratings: President Bush Orange County’s approval ratings of President Bush have declined since last year, but they stand at higher levels than recorded in recent statewide and national surveys. In our current survey, 59 percent of county residents approve of Bush’s general performance, which is similar to the proportion that says the nation is headed in the right direction. One year ago, 68 percent of Orange County residents approved of the president’s overall performance in office, while 57 percent offered this rating in our September 2001 survey, which was conducted just before the September 11th terrorist attacks. Comparing the Orange County survey with state and national surveys conducted around the time of this survey, we find that the county’s residents are more generous in their overall approval of Bush than are residents across the state (PPIC Statewide Survey, 48%) and the nation (Newsweek poll, 52%). A majority of county residents say they approve of Bush’s overall job performance in both the North and South regions and across age, education, gender, and income categories. Latinos (57%) and whites (61%) and the U.S.-born (60%) and immigrants (56%) express similar levels of approval for the president. However, the perception of the president’s performance varies sharply across party lines and political ideologies: A majority of Democrats (68%) and liberals (62%) disapprove of Bush, while Republicans (84%) and conservatives (78%) are highly supportive of the president’s overall performance. Indeed, the decline in support for the president since last year is a result of increasing disapproval among Democrats (48% to 68%) and independents (35% to 50%), since eight in 10 Republicans have consistently said that they approve of the overall performance of Bush in the Oval Office.
The president’s more specific ratings on two other dimensions are similar to his overall ratings: Fifty-five percent of Orange County residents approve of the way he is handling the national economy, and 60 percent approve of the way that he is handling terrorism and homeland security issues. The president’s ratings on economic issues in Orange County today are similar to those from a year ago. Californians as a whole gave the president similar ratings on homeland security (62% in August 2003); however, they were less generous than Orange County residents in their assessment of the president’s handling of economic issues (42% in September 2003). Among these specific approval ratings, there are, once again, sharp differences across political parties and ideological groups.
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