In another thread, Shodan made the claim that even when George Bush’s approval poll numbers were at their lowest, they were still higher than Nancy Pelosi’s or Harry Reid’s.
Without getting into the accuracy of that particular claim, it occurred to me that the overall premise might be biased. The idea of “respect the office even if you don’t respect the man” probably has a bigger effect for the President than it does on the Speaker of the House or the Senate Majority Leader. In addition there’s also a recognition factor: a President is going to be much better known that a Congrssional leader and this too could affect the approval ratings.
I’m thinking that if the average approval for a President is 60% and the average approval for a Speaker is 40% and President Smith’s approval is 55% and Speaker Jones’ approval is 45%, then arguably Jones is more popular than Smith because Smith is five percent below the average for his office while Jones is five percent above the average for his.
So are there any numbers which could be used to establish a baseline for the general approval levels for various political offices?
Not that I know of. Obviously any President is far better known than any top Congressional leader, up to and including the Speaker of the House and the Senate Majority Leader. Adjusting the poll to only tally those who actually know who holds the latter two offices is probably going to leave you with such a relatively small cross-section of political junkies that I just don’t know how useful it would be in gauging relative popularity.
Leaving aside the comparison of an appointed office with one that is elected by personal vote, this doesn’t even look like a truthful claim. I googled it and found that Bush had his lowest approval rating at 25% in october 2008, while Pelosi had 35% approval in february 2009 (It appears that speakers of the house aren’t polled nearly as frequently as sitting presidents, so unfortunately it’s difficult to make a straight comparison here.). Bush’s approval numbers Pelosi’s approval numbers
The Speaker and the Senate Majority Leader are both elected - first by their constituents to the House and the Senate, then by colleagues to their leadership posts. They’re not appointed.
Ah, sorry about that misunderstanding. I could have sworn I had read that somewhere, but apparently it’s only the speaker pro tempore who is appointed.
You are correct (and I was not) that Pelosi is currently more popular than Bush was at his lowest.
What I should have said was that Bush is currently more popular than Pelosi, as is Palin. I believe the claim that Bush at his lowest was more popular than Reid is still correct - if Bush bottomed out at 25%, Reid is currently at 15%.
Perhaps a better comparison would be to put Pelosi’s numbers against another Speaker, like Newt Gingrich. At this point in his tenure as Speaker, Gingrich was at 37% approval. Pelosi is at 32%. (Cite).
Of course, six months into his first term, Bush rated better than Obama does (cite). FWIW.