When did this kind of polling begin?
What kind of polling? RasmussenReports.com came out around 1999. I hesitate to use other pollsters’ “strongly disapprove” data, because that’d be a little like comparing apples to oranges, since wording is so much more important than when one simply measures approval or disapproval. But NPR’s “strongly disapprove” to “strongly approve” ration has to be at least as terrifying to Democrats as Rasmussen. Only 34% “strongly disapprove,” but only 20% “strongly approve.”