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McCain, N.H. Republicans find Bush's unpopularity a heavy burden

  • Story Highlights
  • A poll finds Bush's approval ratings down to 24 percent in New Hampshire
  • Bush could turn independents, critical to John McCain, away from GOP primary
  • GOP Sen. John Sununu of New Hampshire up for re-election in 2008
  • Next Article in Politics »
By Bill Schneider
CNN Senior Political Analyst
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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush says he is not giving a lot of attention to politics right now.

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President Bush isn't facing voters next year, but his unpopularity could be a drag on Republicans who are.

"I looked in the mirror and made decisions based on principle, not on politics," he said at his news conference last week.

That's easy for him to say -- he's not on the ballot next year. But a lot of other Republicans will be.

New Hampshire has become a battleground state. It was the only state to switch from Bush in 2000 to John Kerry in 2004.

In last year's election, Democrats made a clean sweep:

  • They took both of the state's House seats away from Republicans.
  • The Democratic governor got re-elected with nearly three-quarters of the vote.
  • The New Hampshire state Senate went Democratic for the first time since the 1950s.
  • The state House of Representatives became Democratic for the first time since the 19th century.
  • Are there any Republicans left?

    "We still have two GOP senators," said Paul Manuel, director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics.

    Sen. John Sununu is up for re-election next year, "and the Democrats are already starting to mention his role in supporting the Iraq war to see whether or not that can hurt him in the election."

    Bush's job approval rating has fallen to a new low in New Hampshire -- 24 percent, according to a CNN/WMUR poll conducted by the University of New Hampshire. That's well below the national average of 32 percent in a CNN poll taken in June. It's also down from 39 percent in New Hampshire a year ago.

    Support for the Iraq war has also reached a new low in the Granite State -- 35 percent, compared with 47 percent a year ago.

    After Tuesday's all-night session, both of New Hampshire's Republican senators voted not to allow debate on a bill that would get American combat troops out of Iraq by next spring. Sixty-one percent of New Hampshirites support such a withdrawal -- 27 percent want troops withdrawn immediately and 34 percent want them withdrawn by next March.

    "These results may be especially troubling for John McCain,'' said Keating Holland, CNN's polling director.

    "Independents in New Hampshire were key to McCain's victory in the state's GOP primary in 2000. But in 2008, dissatisfaction with Bush may lead independents to vote in the Democratic instead of the Republican primary in New Hampshire -- a state that allows independents to choose which party's primary they want to participate in," Holland explained. "If this happens, McCain might lose one of his key constituencies in New Hampshire."

    In the face of numbers like those in New Hampshire, what can Republicans do?

    They can turn against Bush on Iraq. But only four out of 48 Republican senators did that in Wednesday morning's vote.

    They can try to score points for defying public opinion, as McCain is doing.

    "The verdict of the people will arrive long before history's," McCain said on the Senate floor Wednesday morning. "I am unlikely to ever know how history has judged us in this hour. The public's judgment of me, I will know soon enough. I will accept it as I must, but whether it is favorable or unforgiving, I will stand where I stand.''

    Republicans can also hope that voters will spread the blame.

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    "Remember -- the Democrats in 2008 will be very different than in 2006,'' Manuel said. "They would've been in power for two years, and so, shouldn't some of the responsibility go to them as well?" asks the Granite State pundit.

    The CNN/WMUR poll of 524 New Hampshire residents was conducted by telephone from July 9 through July 17. The poll had a sampling error of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points. E-mail to a friend E-mail to a friend

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