Bad News for the G.O.P.

President Eisenhower's political popularity rating is down five Gallup poll percentage points below his previous low of 57%, recorded just after the 1954 congressional elections and again after the Little Rock segregation crisis last year. Results of last week's survey of opinion on the way Ike is doing his job:

Approve 52%

Disapprove 33%

No opinion 15%

Congressional Republicans, who figure by rough rule of thumb that they must get 55% of the vote outside the Democratic South to win this year's congressional elections, found themselves at the lowest low since 1936. Gallup poll of Northerners:

Republicans 46%

Democrats 54%

The congressional results nationwide:

Republicans 44%

Democrats 56%

In both the presidential and congressional polls, Gallup found one overriding reason for the G.O.P. slump: the recession and fear of unemployment. In still another poll, Gallup reported that unemployment had become the problem of greatest public concern. Just a month before, 30% had listed keeping the peace as the nation's top problem, against 7% naming unemployment. Last week's figures: unemployment 40%; keeping the peace 17%. This, said the pollsters, was the first time since Depression year 1937 that unemployment had been rated the U.S.'s No. 1 problem.

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