Dueling Polls

The general usefulness of presidential polls/approval ratings has once again been brought into question by contradictory Washington Post/ABC and CNN/USA Today/Gallup polls.

According to CNN:

A CNN/USA Today Gallup poll conducted over the weekend found his approval rating stood at 41 percent, while more than half, or 56 percent, disapprove of how the president is handling his job. A majority, or 52 percent, say it was a mistake to send troops to Iraq, and 61 percent say they disapprove of how he is handling Iraq specifically. The margin of error was plus or minus 3 percentage points.

The poll interviews were conducted before President Bush's Oval Office address, which was broadcast on primetime television Sunday.

And yet, via Instapundit, we learn of the Washington Post/ABC News poll:

President Bush's approval rating has surged in recent weeks, reversing what had been an extended period of decline, with Americans now expressing renewed optimism about the future of democracy in Iraq, the campaign against terrorism and the U.S. economy, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News Poll.

Bush's overall approval rating rose to 47 percent, from 39 percent in early November, with 52 percent saying they disapprove of how he is handling his job. His approval rating on Iraq jumped 10 percentage points since early November, to 46 percent, while his rating on the economy rose 11 points, to 47 percent. A clear majority, 56 percent, said they approve of the way Bush is handling the fight against terrorism -- a traditional strong point in his reputation that nonetheless had flagged to 48 percent in the November poll.

Like the CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, this one does not take into account last night's speech or this morning's press conference.

So what's a right-wing reactionary Bush-lackey to think?! One possibile explanation, of course, takes into account the fact that Bush's approval rating in the Gallup poll never changed. While his rating in the WaPo/ABC poll had plunged to the low-to-mid thirties in October/November, the Gallup poll had consistently put his approval rating in the low 40s, where it remains to this day. According to Gallup, therefore, the past two months, which had hardly been wanting for negative news for the administration has had absolutely no effect on his rating.

Likewise, a new strategy and aggressive counterattack against Democrats who had calling for immediate withdrawal and accusing Bush of lying his way into war had no effect on his approval rating. This leads us to two possible conclusions. We are either left wondering exactly what actions taken by the administration are needed to affect the president's approval rating in one way or the other, or Gallup has some problems in its polling methodology that need to be tweaked.