President Clinton's 11-point decline in overall job approval in just seven weeks was both surprising and inevitable. Surprising in that it took this long for him to suffer a second-term decline in the polls, and inevitable in that sooner or later it happens to all two-term presidents.
In the May 23-24 Gallup Poll for CNN and USA Today, Clinton's approval number dropped to 53 percent, his lowest since August 1996. His disapproval number was 42 percent, the highest since June 1996. As recently as March 30-31, Clinton's job approval in the Gallup Poll was 64 percent, extraordinarily high for a second-term president, with a disapproval of 32 percent. More impressively, beginning with a January 8-10 Gallup poll and through nine more polls ending in early March, Clinton's job rating hovered on an even higher plateau, between 65 and 70 percent. In March the decline began, with the president winding up 17 points below that peak in the most recent survey.
It's hard to say exactly why Clinton's numbers have dropped so dramatically. The primary cause is certainly public disillusionment over
Subscribe Today
Our subscribers have first access to individual race pages for each House, Senate and Governors race, which will include race ratings (each race is rated on a seven-point scale) and a narrative analysis pertaining to that race.