1.   Approval rates were high even in republican strongholds in the South.

2.   Approval rates for new members cannot be fairly calculated.

3.   The poll found continued high approval rates for the president.

4.   There also would be some way to measure the approval rate for foreign companies wanting to sell insurance in the highly regulated Japanese market.

5.   Fritz Elmendorf, a spokesman for the Consumer Bankers Association in Arlington, Va., conceded a gap in loan approval rates but cited improvement.

6.   His approval rate has been sinking gradually in the past year because of a series of policy failures and public works disasters.

7.   But Koizumi brushed aside the decline in the approval rate, and vowed to push reforms of the government and the ailing Japanese economy.

8.   The approval rate nosedived after he sacked hugely popular foreign minister Makiko Tanaka in January.

9.   The latest approval rate was up two percentage points from a previous survey in November, according to the nationwide survey by the Mainichi Shimbun.