Bush Approval Ratings and Pump Prices

As part of our Chart of the Day service (a feature in our Mini Institutional research package), last Wednesday we sent our clients the following graph that details the inverse correlation between George W. Bush's approval rating and the price of crude oil.

(Birinyi Associates Chart of the Day, 9/13/06)

The events of the days following this chart seemed to reinforce our point, as falling oil prices dominated the news while President Bush's approval rating rose.  Then, this morning, USA Today juxtaposed these two headlines on its front page (presumably unintentionally), and this really caught our eye.

 

(USA Today, 9/19/06)

For further demonstration of this correlation, we updated the chart from Wednesday's report below.

(Updated 9/19/06)