I have diaried
here and
here about the relationship between Bush approval and the price of gasoline. I've pointed to the
correlation graphed by Dr. Pollkatz. And the message has been ignored or disparaged.
Well today Bush's approval on Rasmussen is up to 47%, up six percentage points in three days. Rasmussen has this to say:
Those are by far the best numbers for the President since mid-February.
Apparantly the wayward Republicans are coming home to Daddy.
Does anyone think it is a coincidence that mid-February was the price of gasoline at the pump started going steadily up until its peak in July and at the same time Bush's approval started going down.
I know people are going to say correlation doesn't equal causation (I know that, I'm an epidemiologist, but correlation is a tool for uncovering relationships that merit further investigation) and Rasmussen polls are worthless (I look at it for trends, not absolute numbers).
We have to acknowledge that something is going on here. Some people think it is an oil company conspiracy but I doubt of they can manipulate the markets for more than a few weeks. It is not just the pump price, it is the price of crude and gasoline on the futures market and gaming that for any significant amount of time would be like trying to control the stock market (oil is the most widely traded commodity in the world, according to the New York Mercantile exchange).
Does anyone but me think that this is going to screw us come November, oil company conspiracy or not?