President Bush has a 56 percent approval rating among blacks, a huge increase over the ratings given former President Reagan, according to a new CBS News-New York Times poll. Only 13 percent of blacks supported Reagan at about the same point in his presidency, CBS Evening News reported Thursday. In May 1982, Reagan had a 73 percent disapproval rating among blacks; in the current poll, 26 percent of blacks surveyed disapproved of Bush, said Kathleen A. Frankovic, of the CBS network's polling division. CBS-Times polls conducted during Reagan's entire time in office found he had an average 67 percent disapproval rating among blacks, Frankovic said. The new survey is the fourth consecutive Times-CBS News poll in the last six months in which a majority of blacks said they approved of Bush's handling of his job, the Times reported in today's editions. For the last 30 years, five out of six blacks have voted for the Democratic presidential candidate, no matter who the nominee was, CBS reported. In the new poll, one out of 10 blacks said they probably would vote for Bush against a Democratic candidate in 1992, while another 20 percent said their choice would depend on who was running, the Times said. One-third of the blacks surveyed, and 46 percent of the whites, said their opinion of Bush had improved since he became president, the Times said. Blacks were evenly divided on whether Bush is doing a good job handling the war on drugs, while whites approved 56 percent to 35 percent, the Times said. White respondents gave Bush an overall approval rating of 75 percent to 14 percent. The telephone poll of 1,515 adult Americans, including 403 blacks, was conducted March 30-April 2. The margin of error for the entire survey is plus or minus 3 percentage points; for blacks it is 5 percentage points.
