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American Morning

Gallup Poll: British View Bush More Negatively, Clinton More Positively Than Americans

Aired April 18, 2001 - 09:31   ET

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

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: President Bush is nearing the end of his first 100 days in office, and his approval rating remains high, at least among Americans. Gallup Poll editor-in-chief Frank Newport compares U.S. and British views of Mr. Bush.

You've got some surprises for us this morning -- Frank.

FRANK NEWPORT, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, GALLUP POLL: Good morning, Leon.

In fact, you're right. In terms of the United States, Bush is doing pretty well. I'll show you in a moment, there's about a 59 percent, 60 percent approval rating, which, generally speaking, is pretty good for presidents.

But recently -- just a week or two ago -- we were polling in our Gallup Great Britain operation -- of all adults in the United Kingdom -- and discovered that there's a really different perception of President Bush and, interestingly, former President Bill Clinton among our British friends.

Let's look at the comparison here. First of all, in the United States, there is a 59 percent job approval rating for George W. Bush, as I mentioned, but look at this: We asked Britons in our UK sample to tell us, from what they know and have read, what is their rating of the job President George W. Bush is doing in the United States, and look at that -- just 25 percent approval, and you've got 42 percent disapproval.

Another way of looking at it is this: This is the British viewpoint here. These are the viewpoints of United Kingdom citizens, from a random sample. In favorability, George W. Bush is just 26 percent favorable and 51 percent unfavorable. That's a lot higher than we thought it would be.

We also asked, thinking back to former President Bill Clinton -- and look at that: We've got 56 percent favorable. So the British still have a very favorable remembrance of Bill Clinton, and so far, their impression of George W. Bush is more negative.

For comparison, we looked at exactly the same numbers from March for the United States: It's a flip. In the United States, there was a 63 percent favorable rating for Bush -- and this was taken when Clinton was still in the middle of those pardon scandals and so forth, or at least the discussion about what would happen on the pardons. You can see Americans are much more negative on Bill Clinton.

All in all, the bottom line is that the British still remember Bill Clinton fairly positively, Leon and Daryn, but have reservations about Bush so far.

We think, looking at the data, that the environment could be part of it. The British are much more sensitive to it and worried about the environment and the Kyoto Accords than are citizens of the United States at this point.

Leon, Daryn, back to you.

HARRIS: Thanks much, Frank Newport, reporting live this morning, from Princeton, New Jersey.

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