Juliusblog has a chart comparing approval ratings on a timeline with terror alerts. Guess what? Juliusblog makes the following observations:
- Whenever his ratings dip, there’s a new terror alert.
- Every terror alert is followed by a slight uptick of Bush approval ratings.
- Whenever there are many unfavorable headlines, there’s another alert or announcement (distraction effect).
- As we approach the 2004 elections, the number and frequency of terror alerts keeps growing, to the point that they collapse in the graphic. At the same time, Bush ratings are lower than ever.
An update to the entry adds the following:
we are not claiming that all these alerts are politically motivated. We are sure a considerable amount of these alerts were legit and caused by real and immediate information of potential threats. What is important to note is that many of these “immediate” terror alerts were later on discredited (in some cases they used old data, in other cases the announcements were less immediate and less urgent that we were lead to believe, as the press reported.) Those are the cases that could be interpreted as politically motivated, especially when they seemed to coincide with political news and events unfavorable to the administration. (emphasis added)
Along the way, however, Juliusblog cites Stuart Eugene Thiel’s Pollkatz for loads of other political graphs and news.