US President George W. Bush's approval rating continued its downward spiral in two polls out Thursday, reaching new lows on his performance in the war on terror and Iraq, and on handling the Hurricane Katrina aftermath. A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released Thursday showed Bush's overall ratings sank to 40, a record low.
Forty-nine percent of those polled believe the US economy will worsen over the next year. And 55 percent support bringing US troops home from Iraq, while just 36 percent support Bush's policy of keeping the troops in place until peace can be guaranteed.
Nearly 60 percent of those polled said they were unhappy with the Bush administration's response to Hurricane Katrina. The September 9-12 poll of 1,013 people has a three-percentage-point margin of error.
A separate New York Times/CBS News poll also out Thursday showed that just half of Americans surveyed approve of Bush's handling of terrorism, his strongest point since scoring a 90 percent approval rating following the September 11, 2001 attacks.
More than 60 percent believe that Bush does not share their priorities for the country, a 10 percent drop over his rating when he was re-elected in November 2004.
Bush's overall job approval rating, however, has remained at 41 percent since mid-year, with a 53 percent disapproval rating. But following the Katrina fiasco, 56 percent of those polled are less confident in the government's ability to respond to disasters.
The figures are "comparable to Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton's worst ratings, but well above the worst ever posted by the president's father, Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon," the Times said.
The Times/CBS News poll of 1,167 adults - 877 whites and 211 blacks - was conducted September 8-11. It has a margin of error of three percentage points for white respondents and seven percentage points for black respondents.