Bush Loses Support of His Base

Polling released today by Gallup finds that President Bush's approval rating continues to be mired down, with this week's number pegged at 37 percent.
Of more importance from the data released today, however, are the demographic breakdowns of Bush's approval rating over the last three or so months, with each of the subgroups maintaining a fairly low margin of error due to the large overall number of interviews conducted this summer. Comparing the numbers published by Gallup with the exit polling from 2004, we find some very interesting things.
President Bush is down among just about every demographic, and the extent to which he has dropped is similar among most of these demographics (close to 15 percent, which mirrors his overall decline). Bush is even down significantly among the key demographics that propelled him to reelection in 2004. What this tells us is that contrary to Republican claims that the conservative base is currently holding, a sizeable chunk of the GOP base -- close to 1 in 6 -- has abandoned the President since his reelection bid. If this trend continues through November, and it seems unlikely that there will be a major turnaround before then, Republicans running for Congress this year will be in for a seriously rough ride.
(I'm going to try to put together a graph comparing Gallup's polling and the exit polling from 2004 that I'll put up either later today or early tomorrow.)
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