WASHINGTON — Beset by reversals at home and abroad, President Bush has seen his job-approval rating tumble to its level before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and he now faces an electorate as narrowly split as in the 2000 election, new polls have found.
In a succession of surveys, Bush's support has eroded -- amid public anxiety over the rising price tag and casualty count in Iraq and the continued sluggishness of the domestic economy -- to the point where Americans divide almost exactly in half on whether he is doing a good job as president and whether they prefer him or a Democrat in the 2004 election.
Both in its precarious balance and its sharp polarization along lines of partisanship, race and education, the country's assessment of Bush today closely resembles the achingly close divide that defined the 2000 vote and the first months of his presidency.
"We are back to where we were in 2000 and where we were on Sept. 10 [2001]," said Andrew Kohut, director of the nonpartisan Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. "In a sense, we are back to square one."
Most analysts in both parties agree that Bush is stronger today than he was before Sept. 11 in one key aspect -- voters have more confidence in him as a leader, particularly in the war against terrorism. And in next year's campaign, Bush should benefit from an enormous fund-raising lead over the eventual Democratic nominee, as well as a formidable Republican effort to turn out supporters.
But growing doubts about Bush's policies on Iraq and the economy have depressed his support in most polls to the 50% level that experts in both parties consider the danger zone for an incumbent.
GOP strategists were quick to point out that other presidents with approval ratings even lower than Bush's during their third year -- including Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton -- easily won reelection.
But the approval ratings for Reagan and Clinton were rising around this point in their presidencies. In the last 50 years, the only presidents whose approval ratings were unambiguously falling in Gallup surveys as they entered their election year were Gerald R. Ford and George H. W. Bush, the president's father. Both were defeated.
"There is plenty of time still for [the younger Bush] to recover," said Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory University in Atlanta. "But the trend is more worrisome for him at this point than where he is in absolute terms."
