Poll Finds Americans Pessimistic, Want Change

Thirty-nine percent of Americans said they now have a favorable impression of the Republican Party, lower than at any point since December 1998, when Republicans were in the midst of impeachment proceedings against then-President Bill Clinton.

Among the GOP rank and file, Republican favorability has fallen 15 percentage points since March 2006 (from 93 percent to 78 percent). It has dropped 19 points among independents, whose support for Democratic candidates in last year's midterm elections contributed significantly to GOP losses in the House and the Senate.

Only 23 percent of those surveyed said they want to keep going "in the direction Bush has been taking us," and the appetite for change is as high as it was in the summer of 1992, in the lead-up to Bill Clinton's defeat of President George H.W. Bush. It is significantly higher than it was in the summer of 2000 or the fall of 1988.

"We're in a terrible mess," said Jay Davis, who works on computers for an insurance company and lives in Portland, Maine. "The war is an incredible mistake, and it becomes more and more obvious. The economy is just being propped up with toothpicks."

Jo Wright, a retired Episcopal priest from Vinita, Okla., said, "It just seems that after these eight years most people think there's got to be a change, and I'm with them."

Greg Coy, a 911 dispatcher who lives in Shippensburg, Pa., is less pessimistic about the overall state of the country than Davis or Wright, but he is unhappy with both the president and Congress. He voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004, but he said: "If he came up again [for reelection], I wouldn't vote for him. The last year I think he's dropped something, and I'm not sure what it is."

Coy also offered a broader indictment of a political system he sees as gridlocked by partisanship. "Here's the problem with this country," he said. "Just because it's a Republican idea, Democrats don't like it, and because it's a Democratic idea, Republicans don't like it. The Congress should go with what works for this country. We have gotten away from that."

Justin Munro, a contractor from Reading, Pa., offered a less widely held view of Bush's policies and the direction of the country. "I'm pretty confident that time will prove that maybe going into Iraq was the right thing to do," he said. He also believes that Bush has not gotten enough credit on the economy: "I think we'll look back on that, too, and see that the tax cuts were the right thing to do."

At this stage, three issues dominate the electoral landscape, with the war in Iraq at the top of the list. Nearly half of all adults, 45 percent, cited Iraq as the most or second-most important issue in their choice for president. About three in 10 cited the economy and jobs (29 percent) or health care (27 percent). All other issues are in the single digits.

Iraq is tops across party lines, but Democrats are twice as likely as Republicans to highlight health care as one of the two most important issues for 2008 (34 percent to 16 percent). Health-care concerns peak among African Americans: Twenty percent called it the election's most important issue, and 38 percent said it is one of the top two.

While 12 percent of Republicans and 10 percent of independents cited immigration as one of the top two issues, it was highlighted by 3 percent of Democrats. Terrorism is also a more prominent concern among Republicans; 17 percent put it in their top two, while 3 percent of Democrats did the same.

The Democratic Party holds double-digit leads over the GOP as the party most trusted to handle the three most frequently cited issues for 2008: Iraq, health care and the economy. The Democratic advantages on immigration and taxes are narrower, and the parties are at rough parity on terrorism, once a major Republican strong point.