By Associated Press
Birmingham AL – A new survey shows a slight majority of Alabamians feel President Bush is doing only a fair or poor job overall and a large majority view his handling of the Iraq war as only fair or poor.
The survey by the Press-Register and University of South Alabama marked the first time that the poll has found more than half rating Bush only fair or poor: 29 percent rated his job as poor, 23 percent only fair, 38 percent good and 8 percent excellent.
The last time the survey asked about Bush's overall job performance, in August 2005, 52 percent rated it as good or excellent.
The survey, published Sunday, also found that when asked about Bush's handling of the war in Iraq, 40 percent rated it poor, 24 percent only fair, 25 percent good and 7 percent excellent.
But while respondents don't approve of Bush's handling of the war, most trust the president to do a better job handling it than Democrats: 50 percent sided with the GOP, 29 percent sided with Democrats and 21 percent didn't know or had no answer.
"Voters are just conflicted," said Natalie Davis, a political scientist and pollster at Birmingham-Southern College.
When asked if the situation in Iraq is a civil war, 49 percent agreed and 37 percent disagreed; and when asked if war is worth fighting, 49 percent said it's not and 42 percent said it is. But when asked if they agree with the Democrats' call for troop withdrawals, only 39 percent agreed while 49 percent sided with Republicans who blocked the withdrawal measure.
The poll was based on telephone interviews with 431 adult residents of Alabama over July 23-26 by USA Polling Group. Its margin of sampling error was plus or minus 4.7 percentage points.
While Bush's numbers may be sagging, the view of Congress is worse. The poll found only 2 percent rate its performance as excellent and just 19 percent good, while 45 percent rate it only fair and 31 percent poor.
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Information from: Press-Register, http://www.al.com/mobileregister