Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
Summary of Findings Public interest in economic news remained high last week as 40% of Americans followed news about the condition of the U.S. economy very closely. Nearly one-in-four Americans (23%) listed the economy as the single news story they were following more closely than any other, placing it second only to the presidential campaign. [...]
Summary of Findings Barack Obama and John McCain have made significant gains in support as the field of candidates has narrowed in both parties. John McCain now leads 42%-22% over Mitt Romney among Republican voters nationally. Support for McCain is up 13 points since mid-January, and he currently draws about twice as much support as [...]
So far, the 2008 primaries and caucuses have been anything but predictable – comebacks, fallbacks, not to mention surprised pollsters. But a closer look reveals some common themes that have emerged, despite a still-forming consensus about nominees. read the full article at nytimes.com
Summary of Findings The proportion of Americans who rely solely on a cell phone for their telephone service continues to grow, as does the share who still have a landline phone but do most of their calling on their cell phone. With these changes, there is an increased concern that polls conducted only on landline [...]
The results in Saturday’s Democratic primary in South Carolina offer important evidence — if not yet answers — to three big questions in this campaign: Can Barack Obama solidify all segments of the black vote behind him? Can he be competitive among white voters, especially in the South? And can we trust pre-election polls in [...]
Nearly lost in the blizzard of recent poll reports were the findings of a Gallup survey that the current Republican frontrunner, John McCain, might well give each of the two Democratic frontrunners a run for their money. When Gallup asked 1,598 likely voters whom they’d back if the presidential election were held today, respondents chose [...]
Summary of Findings With the economy slowing and the stock market reeling, there is greater agreement among Republicans and Democrats that strengthening the nation’s economy should be a top priority for the president and Congress in the coming year. By contrast, partisan differences over the importance of other domestic issues — such as dealing with [...]
A lot of attention has been paid to the women’s vote in the first two Democratic nominating contests. In the Iowa caucuses, Barack Obama won a narrow victory over Hillary Clinton among female voters. But in New Hampshire women rallied to the former first lady giving her a huge 46 percent to 34 percent margin, [...]
Summary of Findings The Republican nomination contest is being increasingly shaped by ideology and religion as it moves toward the Super Tuesday states on Feb. 5. John McCain has moved out to a solid lead nationally, increasing his support among Republican and GOP-leaning voters from 22% in late December to 29% currently. Mike Huckabee, at [...]
Summary of Findings The internet is living up to its potential as a major source for news about the presidential campaign. Nearly a quarter of Americans (24%) say they regularly learn something about the campaign from the internet, almost double the percentage from a comparable point in the 2004 campaign (13%). Moreover, the internet has [...]
Thursday night’s Republican debate in South Carolina in the wake of John McCain’s comeback victory in New Hampshire and Mike Huckabee’s surprising win in Iowa emphasized what a difference one week can make in the nomination process. And in terms of who will get the nod, it raises more questions than answers. Sen. McCain’s win [...]
Summary of Findings In the wake of his victory in the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses, Barack Obama for the first time supplanted Hillary Clinton as the most visible presidential candidate. Overall, 38% of Americans say they heard the most about Obama in the days immediately after the caucuses (Jan. 4-7), while 28% named Clinton as [...]
The failure of the New Hampshire pre-election surveys to mirror the outcome of the Democratic race is one of the most significant miscues in modern polling history. All the published polls, including those that surveyed through Monday, had Sen. Barack Obama comfortably ahead with an average margin of more than 8 percent. These same polls [...]
Summary of Findings On the eve of the Iowa caucuses, Rudy Giuliani’s once solid lead in nationwide polling of Republican voters has vanished. The latest nationwide survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press finds about equal levels of support for John McCain (22%), Rudy Giuliani (20%), and Mike Huckabee (17%). [...]
With the first votes of the 2008 presidential election soon to be cast in the early-decision states, the likely outcome of these contests is more in doubt than in any election cycle in recent history. For the Democratic candidates, the decisive factors are personal and tactical. For Republican contestants, however, the ultimate outcome may be [...]
Summary of Findings Oprah Winfrey’s well-publicized appearances with Barack Obama have raised Obama’s visibility, especially among African Americans. Roughly a quarter of Americans (26%) say they have heard more about Obama recently than any other presidential candidate, up from just 10% in November. Meanwhile, though Hillary Clinton remains the most visible candidate overall, the proportion [...]
Summary of Findings Voters in the early primary states of Iowa and New Hampshire are being inundated with mail, phone calls and other contacts from the presidential campaigns. In particular, overwhelming majorities of likely voters in both states have received pre-recorded calls, or “robo-calls,” about the campaign. However, far more Democratic voters than Republican voters [...]
Summary of Findings Republican voter sentiment in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina is highly fluid. Compared with Democratic voters, likely Republican voters in these three politically disparate states express less enthusiasm about their field of presidential candidates, and many Republicans voice only modest support for their choices. Mike Huckabee runs even with Mitt Romney [...]
On Thursday Dec. 6, Mitt Romney will deliver an address outlining the way his religious faith has influenced his political career. Recent Pew polling finds that Romney, more than any other presidential candidate (Republican or Democrat), is viewed as very religious by the public. This perception is, for the most part, an asset for Romney’s [...]
Summary of Findings Democrats enter the presidential primary campaign upbeat about their candidates and united in their views on major issues. Sen. Hillary Clinton is the clear frontrunner in New Hampshire and South Carolina, where she holds 19-point and 14-point leads, respectively. However in Iowa she is in a statistical tie with Barack Obama. Clinton [...]
Even though nearly all voters with a partisan leaning intend to vote in their own party’s primaries or caucuses, many do have opinions about the candidates running in the other party’s contests. Hillary Clinton’s unpopularity among Republicans is abundantly clear. Just 11% of Republican voters say they would like to see Clinton win the Democratic [...]
Introduction and Summary A year before the 2008 presidential election, most major national opinion trends decidedly favor the Democrats. Discontent with the state of the nation is markedly greater than it was four years ago. President Bush’s approval rating has fallen from 50% to 30% over this period. And the Democrats’ advantage over the Republicans [...]
Summary of Findings The 2008 presidential campaign began much earlier than usual, but public interest in the campaign is at most only modestly higher than in previous campaigns. While Democrats are following the campaign more closely than at the same stage in previous primary contests, Republicans are no more engaged than in the past, resulting [...]
Summary of Findings The public is no more engaged by the presidential campaign than it was in the spring, and the candidates’ images remain somewhat blurry. But the personal strengths of several leading candidates are beginning to come into focus for voters. Views of Hillary Clinton are more sharply drawn than those of other leading [...]
Summary of Findings Hillary Clinton continues to lead Barack Obama by a wide margin in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. But Obama has something Clinton doesn’t have — the support of Oprah Winfrey. Winfrey endorsed Obama in May of this year and recently held a fundraiser for him at her Malibu, Calif. home. [...]
Summary of Findings So far religion is not proving to be a clear-cut positive in the 2008 presidential campaign. The candidates viewed by voters as the least religious among the leading contenders are the current frontrunners for the Democratic and Republican nominations — Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani, respectively. On the other hand, the candidate [...]
The exceptionally strong support for both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama among black voters (and, for Clinton, among liberal Democratic and lower-income white voters as well), may help explain the relatively limited appeal of presidential hopeful John Edwards, whose populist platform has not translated so far into support from these key segments of the Democratic [...]
Summary of Findings Sen. Hillary Clinton is by far the most popular presidential candidate among her own party’s voters, but has among the lowest overall favorable ratings of the leading candidates. In sharp contrast, the front-running Republican candidate, Rudy Giuliani, evokes relatively modest enthusiasm from the GOP base, but is as broadly popular with all [...]
The final votes won’t be counted for another 15 months, but the 2008 presidential campaign already seems to be wearing out its welcome with many Americans. When asked to sum up their impression of the early-blooming campaign in a word, a majority of the public has a negative assessment, while just one-in-five has a kind [...]
Summary of Findings As official Washington winds down for its summer holiday, all three branches of government are coming under fire from the American public. Just 29% approve of the way President Bush is handling his job, and only slightly more, 33%, approve of the job performance of the Democratic leaders of Congress. Even the [...]
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About Pew Research Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts.
