No matter, the president survived and his approval rating were down, they were high enough to beat Senator Kerry and the Democrats. Date Organization Approve Disapprove No Opinion Sample Size Notes 11/7-10/04

Gallup

LAT

Exiting Voters

Democracy Corps

Marist

GW/Battleground

LV (the Roper Center, 2004)

Media

Media coverage of the Bush administration has been too busy jumping from one topic to the next so there has been little overall damage to the Bush administration. When ever the situation gets too hot there seems to be a new story to take the heat off of the last one. Unlike the Monica Lewinski situation for Bill Clinton, there has yet to be a sustained direct attack on the Bush administration. The war on Iraq, the bungling of the search for Bin Laden, the ineffective attack on Afghanistan, the Abu Gharib Prison scandal, escalating gas and oil prices and the overall rate of jobs lost in a poor economy all by themselves would be enough to bring down the administration. but, for some unforeseen reason, the media has bounced between all of these events and therefore has never made the point to the American people that all is not well and we should really tie these results to the current administration. No sooner are we focused on one major story, the media shifts gears and changes to a new subject. This change limits the nation from following up or getting a true understanding of the situation.

America was reading about election returns from Ohio and Florida as they completely overlooked the fact that the casualty rate...

Yet the fact that Fallujah, Iraq is currently at war with the United States as though it was its own country has been whitewashed by world oil prices reaching new highs and Scott Peter's finally being found guilty. Oh, and wasn't there supposed to be internal elections in Iraq. Did the Bush team want us to focus on the elections in Iraq to avoid us noticing the obvious flaws in our own election process? or, where the heck is Bin Laden? The point is that the Bush administration has benefited from our overly scattered media.
If the media was to pick one of the before mentioned topics and really dig as they did for Monica and the cigar, we would be getting rid of the current administration. As the British Secret Service was defending its evidence gathering methods for proof of weapons of mass destruction, consider that the Bush administration was equally as guilty yet the story has fallen completely out of the headlines. And was it mentioned, we still don't know where Bin Laden is Conclusion

In conclusion, this report attempted to look at several polls regarding the United States of America's Presidential Approval ratings and how those rating were affected by specific media stories. The internet is an excellent source for obtaining data and opinion polls and this report utilized the Roper Center web site to provide complete listings of various polls regarding the Presidential Job Approval ratings. A secondary objective of the report was to analyze how the media influenced approval polls and tried to examine how the President's approval ratings fluctuated based on media coverage of events such as the war with Iraq, American military casualties because of the war in Iraq, the recent Abu Gharib Prison scandal or the capture of Saddam Hussein.