PEW Research Tepid Opposition from Democrats, Little Fallout on Environment BUSH'S BASE BACKS HIM TO THE HILT

After three months in office, George W. Bush is doing about as well with the American public as did his predecessors, because Republicans love what they are seeing and Democrats are expressing only modest opposition to his stewardship of the country. Bush's approval ratings among the GOP faithful are slightly higher than ratings for his father at a comparable time and nearly equal to Ronald Reagan's evaluations in April 1981. On the other hand, despite the hard feelings about the way the election was decided, Democrats are expressing considerably less disapproval of the president than Republicans voiced about Bill Clinton eight years ago.

The latest Pew Research Center survey finds 56% expressing approval for the way Bush is handling his job, while 27% say they disapprove. That marks an improvement over Clinton's rating of 55%-37% in April 1993 -- not only because fewer people disapprove of the current president, but also because a considerably larger number strongly approve of Bush than held very positive opinions of Clinton three months into his term (34% vs. 18%).

A sharp partisan pattern underlies these findings: The new president gets extraordinarily favorable evaluations from GOP faithful -- 71% of all Republicans and 85% of conservative Republicans say they very strongly approve of Bush's job performance. Equally striking, just 46% of Democrats disapprove of the Republican president, compared to 69% of Republicans who disapproved of Clinton in 1993.

Subdued Democratic criticism of Bush may well reflect mixed views about the way the party's leadership has dealt with their new opposition role. More than one-in-three Democrats say their leaders have spoken out too little about Bush's policies. Further, Democrats are divided as to who is the party's leader: 27% pick Al Gore, 21% Bill Clinton, 14% Dick Gephardt, 12% Joe Lieberman and 5% point to Tom Daschle. There's much, much more at the site: here

-- Anonymous, April 26, 2001