Saturday Morning News

Gallup Poll: Bill Clinton's Popularity Plummets

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Since President Clinton left office, his administration has been faced with controversy after controversy, from White House gifts to pardons.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: What does the public think about all of this?

Gallup Poll's editor in chief Frank Newport tells us how Clinton fares in the public's eye.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FRANK NEWPORT, GALLUP POLL EDITOR IN CHIEF: Indeed, Bill Clinton has not been faring well at all in the court of public opinion since he's left office, but there's some signs in our most recent polls that the public may be getting a little tired of all the investigations and kind of want to move on past the Bill Clinton era.

Let's show you the numbers.

First of all, the opinion of Bill Clinton on the part of the American public has been going down, down, down. This is our classic Gallup favorable/unfavorable opinion question. We've actually asked it about Clinton all the way back to 1992, but we just started here, November 2000. You can see 57, 57 percent in November and December, not bad numbers overall for Bill Clinton.

But then it really started to go down. By early February you can see the drop to 51 percent and then 42 and now in our most recent poll, March 5 to 7, 39 percent. That's the lowest favorable number in history for Bill Clinton. He was tied at 42. Now he's three points lower. Pretty bad numbers all in all. His image in the eyes of the public just going down.

We can contrast this with George W. Bush. Thought you'd be interested in this. Look at the difference. That's the favorables for Bill Clinton. When we overlay George W. Bush's line, he's been going in the opposite direction. Quite a contrast there.

Now, what about the pardons themselves? Well, the public has very clear perceptions there -- they were wrong. We asked about the Mark Rich pardon. Earlier in February, 20 percent approved it. Now, most recently down to 11 percent thought that pardon was correct. There's absolutely no buy in to Bill Clinton's idea that the pardon was something that was justified.

But, should those hearings continue in Congress -- and here we have much more of a mixed picture from Americans -- 49 percent say yes, but that's a fairly big group, given what we just saw. Forty- three percent of the public said no, the hearing shouldn't go on. And the reason those numbers aren't quite as big is it breaks out differently by partisanship than we usually find. Even among Republicans, about a quarter, you can see over there, say no, let's stop the hearings. Independents break even. And look at the Democrats. You've got 36 percent over there who say the hearings should go on. Sixty percent say they should stop. So again, there's not unanimity on either side of the aisle on those hearings.

All in all, not as much favor to continue the hearings as there is feelings that the pardons were wrong, as I mentioned earlier, some people saying let's move on.

That's where the public stands on Bill Clinton. I'm Frank Newport.

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