Bush camp wary on approval

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The chief strategist for President Bush's re-election campaign yesterday said that if the president's declining approval ratings, which are already at record lows, slip an additional seven percentage points, it will be "very difficult to win."

Citing a Gallup poll that shows Mr. Bush's approval rating at 46 percent, strategist Matthew Dowd said the election could be decided by a relatively small shift in support.

"I have no idea where it will end up, but all the president's numbers have to move is plus or minus five or six ... which can easily happen, because of events," he said. "If his approval numbers move above 50, it's very difficult to lose. If his numbers move below 40, it's very difficult to win. Those are facts."

But Mr. Dowd also said that a downward shift is far less likely than an upward shift "because he's got such a solid level of support among Republicans.

"In order to move much lower than we are today, he'd have to start losing serious Republican support, and there hasn't been any evidence of that," he said. "That's what happened to his father."

White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett, citing a Newsweek poll that pegs the president's approval rating at 42 percent, emphasized that the same survey shows Mr. Bush actually improving his position against presumed Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry.

"Their last poll had us down by seven and now we're down by one in it," Mr. Bartlett said.

He noted that the Massachusetts Democrat had been leading by up to nine percentage points when he effectively clinched his party's nomination in March.

"Not only did he completely squander it by not having a coherent message himself, the president -- despite the difficult news that was taking place -- is framing the debate and obviously has had success in defining who John Kerry really is," he added.

Still, Bush strategists acknowledged the campaign is going through a rough patch.