Bush most unpopular US president
More than three years after leaving office, former President George W Bush remains unpopular with the public, according to a new national poll.
A CNN/ORC International poll also indicates that two-thirds of Americans have a positive view of Bush's predecessor, former President Bill Clinton.
According to the poll, released Thursday morning, 43 percent of people questioned had a favorable opinion of Bush, with 54 percent saying they had an unfavorable view of the former president. Bush's 43 percent favorable rating is the same as it was in 2010 in CNN polling, but is up from his mid-30's favorable rating during 2009, his first year out of the White House.
Former President Jimmy Carter , the one-term Democratic president who was election in 1976 and defeated in 1980, is viewed favorably by 54 percent of the public, with just three in ten seeing him in a negative light.
Bush's father, George HW Bush, gets a 59 percent rating, with 34 percent saying they have an unfavorable view of the first President Bush, who was elected to the White House in 1988.
Bush was defeated in his bid for a second term by Bill Clinton, who has a 66 percent favorable rating in the poll. Only 31 percent say they hold an unfavorable rating of Clinton. The former two-term Democratic president's favorable rating bottomed out in CNN polling at 51 percent in June of 2008, after Clinton took a very active role in advocating for his wife, then Sen Hillary Clinton of New York, in her historic battle with Sen Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination.
The CNN poll was conducted by ORC International, with 1,009 adult Americans questioned by telephone from May 29-31. The survey's overall sampling error is plus or minus three percentage points.
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