Strong feelings, part 2

My last post was about ratings of presidential candidates at the extreme values on the ANES "feeling thermometer." Donald Trump set a record for extremely low (0) ratings in 2016, and broke it in 2020.  In 2016, he had an average level of 100 ratings--in 2020 that rose to the second-highest since they started asking the question in 1968.  The same question has been asked a few times since the election in Pew surveys.*  The percent giving 0 and 100 ratings:

The first point is the ANES survey, which was taken just before the election, and the second was a Pew survey taken shortly after.  Both showed about 15% rating Trump at 100, but that fell to 10% in March 2021 and remained there in July.   Many people accept Trump's claims has an unusually large core of enthusiastic supporters who will stick with him through anything--"I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue..."--but in fact there have been substantial ups and downs in the percent who rate him at 100.   

Another point that struck me in the ANES data is is that there was little variation in zero ratings through 2000, with the exception of George McGovern in 1972, but there was a jump with George W. Bush in 2004.  That was a sign of things to come, so I wanted to look more closely at Bush's negative ratings.  The "feeling thermometer" question was only asked a few times, but there were frequent questions asking if your view of him was very favorable, somewhat favorable, somewhat unfavorable, or very unfavorable.  In fact, I there were enough so that I didn't use all of them, just a selection.  The percent who chose "very unfavorable":

They were pretty steady from May 2000 until April 2003, but very unfavorable ratings rose to 25% by February 2004 and then stayed high, before rising again in 2008.  So the Iraq war seems to have been the key.  It's not surprising that it had an effect, but it is noteworthy that the controversy over the 2000 election apparently didn't.  The 2004 election also didn't make much difference, contrary to what is sometimes said--very unfavorable ratings fell from 34% in October 2004 to 25% in January 2005.  It's also striking that Bush had a large number of very unfavorable ratings even before the financial crisis--44% in 2008, when we were in only a mild recession.  Finally, his very unfavorable ratings dropped after he left office.  I'm not sure if that's a general tendency with former presidents, but it is different from Trump, who just had a small decline in zero ratings.  

* Pew also asked question in 2022, but the data haven't been released and they only report the results in ranges.

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]