Holy crap!

Polls on AOL tend to lean towards the conservative in their results. (AOL is apparently the antithesis of LiveJournal, where many liberals lurk and share stories of meeting their favorite singers/actors/comedians in the most atrocious English/typing possible.) This is why I found the following results surprising:

How would you rate Bush's overall job performance?
Poor 59%
Excellent 18%
Good 13%
Fair 10%
Total Votes: 58,258

(No, I don't know how to make tables in HTML/this pansy-ass version of HTML Blogger has us using. I'm a coding idiot.)

A full 69% of the respondants rate the President's job performance fair to poor. Geh.

... Naturally, I just noticed the number. Am being juvinilish, which is o so stylish.

Crap. Tried not writing that, but I couldn't stop myself. Fudge.

Anyway, only 31% rate the guy positively. The vast majority of respondants replied to the question with a "he sucks!" This surprises me. We all know what I think of him and his administration. I just wasn't expecting that many other people to respond the same way.

Then there were these more policy-specific polls.

Do you understand Bush's Social Security plan?
Yes 68%
No 32%
Do you support it?
No 75%
Yes 25%
Total Votes: 40,358


Do you understand Bush's energy plan?
Yes 60%
No 40%
Do you support it?
No 74%
Yes 26%
Total Votes: 39,825


Do you approve of Bush's handling of Iraq?
No 71%
Yes 29%
Do you approve of Bush's handling of the economy?
No 75%
Yes 25%
Total Votes: 41,170

Again, heavily against Bush's performance, averaging out to just under 75% on overall support ratings.

What's rather stupid is the difference between the approval ratings and the percent who understand the policies. Don't you have to have an understanding of the policy in order to have an opinion on it? What the hell is going on with the jump, of fourteen points in one case, from number who understand to number who disapprove? How can you say you disagree if you don't know what the hell the conversation is about? I can understand if you find a particular plan or policy confusing, but if you really don't understand it, you shouldn't be responding that you don't like it.

This coming from a person who sides against almost everything this particular President has done. (The "almost" from my not being entirely sure there wasn't an instance, here or there, where I might have found myself agreeing with him.)

Not that these polls mean jack shit, as it's completely unscientific, and I could easily go to seven different terminals, select "Poor" for that first poll, and have an affect on the results. Still, the results of AOL polls like these were much different a few months ago.