The New York Times has new numbers. Some highlights:

• Bush received only a two point bump in approval after winning the election. Historically, that's small. For reasons that I cannot explain (and are probably depressing as all hell) when you win an election, it makes people want to vote for you.
  
  
• The Times did not poll Bush above 51% at any single point in 2004. Both these drive home the point that a better candidate could have won.
  
  
• Bush's approval numbers drop significantly when voters are asked about specific issues. Foreign policy? 42% approval. Economy, also 42%; Iraq, 40%. The only issues voters believe Bush is handling well are terrorism (56%) and our response to the Tsunami (81%). The importance, then, of “image” simply cannot be understated. Voters respond to vague, non-specific “connection” with a candidate than they do with actual, specific experience or performance.
  
  
• When the question is changed to include “undecided” in the prompted response, Bush's approval-disapproval drops to 44-40—and 14% undecided. Even going right into the most media-saturated election history, 8% still said they were undecided. So apparently 8% of Americans live in deliberate ignorance. Coincidentally, that's about the same number of Americans that miss “Donny & Marie.”
  
  
• Thanks to the way history is taught, many Americans have difficulty linking specific events to specific causes. When asked if the think subject X will be better or worse off at the end of President Bush's second term, most of the questions got better than 45% saying, “about the same.” People have a hard time believing that politicians actually do things that affect them.
  
  
• Predictable exceptions: 66% of voters think we'll be running a higher national debt in four years, and only 9% of voters think that their federal taxes will go down under Mr. Rebate. That would be the 8% who live in deliberate ignorance plus 1% who are crazy.
  
  
• Notable exception: 75% of voters expect a significant number of American troops in Iraq in four years. They get something that a former senior staffer in the W. Va. State GOP was explaining to be at a Taco Bell last week: “We need somewhere in the middle east to park our army. The king of Saudi Arabia is old and has no heir designated. After he dies, civil war is a real possibility. We were building permanent army bases in Iraq before we reached Baghdad.”
  
  
• The number of Americans opposed to abortion is the largest it's been since the poll started tracking in 1989. But that's only 26%. Only 36% are pro-choice. The number in the middle (legal but strictly regulated) is 35%. Abortion battles are won by whichever movement gets the votes from that group.
  
  
• Demonstrating a firm grasp of the blindingly obvious, 78% of voters believe it is “not possible to overhaul Social Security, cut taxes and pay for the war in Iraq all at the same time without increasing the budget deficit.”
  
  
• 49% of voters approve of the GOP. 51% approve of the Dems. Now, I can understand having the same feeling for both parties. I just don't understand how that feeling can be positive.
  
  
• When you ask how congress is doing it's job, the Don't-Knows jump into the double digits: 17% this month. “Why do I have to know about congress? I thought the President was the king of democracy!”

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