[Mb-civic] Pink Is the New Red - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

Pink Is the New Red
As President Bush's Popularity Falls, the Nation's Color Divide Adds a 
Few Hues
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By Richard Morin
The Washington Post
Monday, April 17, 2006; A13

It seems that only yesterday American politics appeared to have found 
its true colors: Republican Red and Democratic Blue, the visual 
shorthand for an electorate that most thought had become immutably 
divided by geography and partisanship into red states and blue.

But political fashions quickly changed, and so have the colors of this 
year's political map.

States that were once reliably red are turning pink. Some are no longer 
red but a sort of powder blue. In fact, a solid majority of residents in 
states that President Bush carried in 2004 now disapprove of the job he 
is doing as president. Views of the GOP have also soured in those 
Republican red states.

According to the latest Post-ABC News poll, Bush's overall job approval 
rating now averages 43 percent in the states where he beat Democratic 
nominee John Kerry two years ago, while 57 percent disapprove of his 
performance.

Bush is even marginally unpopular, at least on average, in states where 
he beat Kerry with relative ease. The poll data suggest that in states 
where the president's victory margin was greater than five percentage 
points, his average job approval currently stands at 47 percent. Red? 
Hardly. A watery pink at best.

And in states where the president's victory margin was five percentage 
points or less, a clear majority of residents now disapprove of his 
performance. Color them light blue.

More ominously for Republicans, their party also has lost standing with 
the public. Residents of states Bush won in 2004 say they trust the 
Democrats (48 percent) more than the Republicans (42 percent) to deal 
with the country's biggest problems.

Those humbling numbers for Republicans are a far cry from the results of 
surveys taken immediately before the 2004 election. Back then, red 
states were bright red: Bush's overall job approval rating stood 13 
points higher, at 56 percent in states that he eventually won. And 
throughout Bush's first term it was the GOP and not the Democrats whom 
voters in these states trusted to deal with the country's biggest 
problems, sometimes by double-digit margins.

Blue states are still blue -- but it is a deeper, bolder and angrier 
blue, the latest Post-ABC poll suggests. Across states where Kerry 
defeated Bush two years ago, barely a third -- 33 percent -- currently 
approve of the president's overall performance, while 65 percent 
disapprove. That's a 12-point drop in this group of states from a 
Post-ABC survey conducted before the presidential vote.

Taken together, these findings underscore the fact that Bush's fall from 
public grace isn't just occurring in states that were colored blue after 
the last presidential election. And they once again prove that change is 
inevitable in politics and that last year's received wisdom has a way of 
becoming this year's political myth.

To see if the political palette has changed, I divided the 1,027 survey 
respondents in our latest poll into four groups on the basis of how 
their states voted in the 2004 presidential election. Those who lived in 
states where Bush won by more than five percentage points were 
aggregated together. So were those in states where Bush beat Kerry by a 
smaller margin. Residents of states that went for Kerry were split into 
two groups using the same five-percentage-point rule to differentiate 
big Kerry wins from more modest victories.

Of course some states are still dependably Republican. But even these 
are not quite as red as they were a few years ago. For example, Utah 
residents showered Bush with 72 percent of their votes in 2004, his 
biggest win that year. But the latest statewide poll by the Deseret 
Morning News/KSL-TV suggests that 61 percent approve of the job Bush is 
doing as president, a double-digit drop in approval since June. "Bush is 
dragging down every Republican officeholder in the nation, even here," 
pollster Dan Jones, a political science professor at the University of 
Utah, told the Morning News.

Other recent state polls confirm the broad findings of the aggregate 
analysis. In Iowa, Bush beat Kerry by a single percentage point -- 50 
percent to 49 percent -- and before the election, residents were equally 
divided over his overall job performance. Not so now: Bush's approval 
rating had sunk to 37 percent in a Des Moines Register poll conducted in 
January, his worst showing ever.

Closer to home, Bush easily carried Virginia, by eight percentage 
points, two years ago. But a Post survey two weeks before last 
November's gubernatorial election found that Bush's job approval rating 
among likely voters in the commonwealth had fallen to 44 percent, while 
55 percent disapproved of his performance.

That's one big reason Republican gubernatorial candidate Jerry Kilgore 
behaved so oddly toward Bush late in his campaign last year, first 
deciding to be conspicuously absent when the president came calling in 
Norfolk only to invite him to a big election-eve rally a week later. The 
president may expect similar ambivalence from GOP office-seekers in 
tight races as this year's campaign unfolds.

The writer is The Post's director of polling.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/16/AR2006041600858.html?nav=hcmodule
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