The Pool of Polls

Bush's Approval Ratings since 2001Professor Poolkatz’s Pool of Polls is a decidedly fanatical approach to making sense of polling data—specifically, the polls associated with Bush’s approval ratings. The one to the left is a straight representation with standard deviation; note the spikes at 9/11, the start of the 2003 attack on Iraq, and the 2004 elections—all followed by steady downward trends, indicating how artificial the support was. Flush Bush offers another interesting look at the same numbers. For those whose approval is conditional, there’s also the graph comparing Bush Approval and Gasoline Prices.