Majority in U.S. Say Bush Presidency Is a Failure, Poll Finds http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=email_us&refer=us&sid=aKSlfaIwdI6w


Jan. 26 (Bloomberg) -- A majority of Americans said the presidency of George W. Bush has been a failure and that they would be more likely to vote for congressional candidates who oppose him, according to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll.

Fifty-two percent of adults said Bush's administration since 2001 has been a failure, down from 55 percent in October. Fifty- eight percent described his second term as a failure. At the same point in former President Bill Clinton's presidency, 70 percent of those surveyed by Gallup said they considered it a success and 20 percent a failure.
In a poll conducted in January of 2002, after Bush was president for one year, 83 percent of those surveyed said his presidency was a success.

In the new poll, conducted Jan. 20-22, fifty-one percent of those surveyed said they would be more likely to vote for congressional candidates who do not support Bush's policies.

The percentage of Americans who called Bush ``honest and trustworthy'' fell 7 percentage points in the last year to 49 percent, the poll found.

The new poll also found that 62 percent of Americans said they are ``dissatisfied'' with ``the way things are going'' in the U.S., unchanged from a December survey. The percentage of ``dissatisfied'' Americans reached its peak in October of 2005 when 68 percent of those surveyed agreed.

The survey interviewed 1,006 U.S. adults and has a margin of error of 4.5 percentage points. For the questions about whether Bush's presidency is a success, about 500 U.S. adults were surveyed and the margin for error is plus or minus 5 percentage points.

To contact the reporter on this story:
Nicholas Johnston in Washington at njohnston3@bloomberg.net


Contributed by Claudia