February 7, 2004
President Bush's January decline in public opinion started soon after a top adviser on the search for weapons of mass destruction said he did not believe Iraq had large stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons, a tracking poll suggests. David Kay made his initial comments about doubting the weapons existed soon after the administration announced Jan. 23 that Kay was being replaced as the top U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq. Bush's job approval rating dropped 10 points from Jan. 25 through Jan. 31, according to the National Annenberg Election Survey. The tracking poll takes a nightly sample and rolls together two or three nights' findings at a time to produce periodic reports. Support for the war in Iraq also dipped in that period, from a majority saying the situation in Iraq was worth going to war over, 53 percent, to 46 percent during the last few days of January saying it was worth going to war and 49 percent saying it was not. The Annenberg study found Bush's approval dipped from 64 percent right after Bush's Jan. 20 State of the Union address to 54 percent in the late-January period. An AP-Ipsos poll found Bush's approval dipped 9 points during January to the high 40s, the same finding as several other polls released at about that time. Tracking polls like the Annenberg project can detect the timing of shifts in public opinion related to certain important events, though various factors could contribute to a dip in job approval ratings. The Annenberg poll surveyed 1,032 adults during the tracking period from Jan. 26-31. The poll for that sample had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
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