[342]
Bush's approval rating surged to 74 percent at the beginning of the Iraq War, up 19 points from his pre-war rating of 55 percent.[343] Bush's approval rating went below the 50 percent mark in AP-Ipsos polling in December 2004.[344] Thereafter, his approval ratings and approval of his handling of domestic and foreign policy issues steadily dropped. After his re-election in 2004, Bush received increasingly heated criticism from across the political spectrum[345][346][347] for his handling of the Iraq War, his response to Hurricane Katrina,[348][349][350] and to the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse, NSA warrantless surveillance, the Plame affair, and Guantanamo Bay detention camp controversies.[351]
Amid this criticism, the Democratic Party regained control of Congress in the 2006 elections. Polls conducted in 2006 showed an average of 37 percent approval ratings for Bush,[352] the lowest for any second-term president at that point in his term since Harry S. Truman in March 1951 (when Truman's approval rating was 28 percent),[344][353] which contributed to what Bush called the "thumping" of the Republican Party in the 2006 midterm elections.