Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
Summary of Findings Politicians and political reporters are scrambling to book flights for New Hampshire and other presidential primary states, but the public is far from engaged in the jockeying for 2008. About a quarter of Americans (23%) say they have given a lot of thought to candidates who may be running for president, while [...]
The political center forcefully asserted itself in Tuesday’s midterms. The national exit poll showed that political independents, who divided their votes evenly between George Bush and John Kerry in 2004, swung decisively in favor of the Democrats. With roughly nine-in-ten Republicans and Democrats casting ballots for representatives of their parties, just as they did two [...]
President Bush has gotten a bit of good news in some of this month’s polls by national survey organizations. But that verdict is by no means unanimous. Three polls – by AP/Ipsos, Gallup/USA Today and the Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg News – show Bush’s job approval significantly higher than in the beginning of August. But in [...]
Summary of Findings As the congressional midterm campaign begins in earnest, the mood of the electorate is sharply drawn. Voters are disappointed with Congress and disapproving of President Bush. Anti-incumbent sentiment, while a bit lower than a few months ago, is far more extensive than in the previous two midterms and remains close to 1994 [...]
Summary of Findings The public is paying a great deal of attention to major overseas events – the reported terrorist plot against U.S. trans-Atlantic jet liners, the war in Lebanon, as well as the ongoing violence in Iraq. However, there is little indication that these dramatic stories have materially changed public attitudes. Worries about another [...]
Summary of Findings Israel’s offensive into Lebanon has not resulted in a public opinion backlash in the U.S. so far. A new Pew poll conducted July 6-19 finds little change in public sympathy for Israel in its dispute with the Palestinians. A 44%-plurality of U.S. adults say they sympathize more with Israel, while 9% sympathize [...]
Summary of Findings With less than five months to go before Election Day, Democrats hold two distinct advantages in the midterm campaign that they have not enjoyed for some time. First, Americans continue to say they favor the Democratic candidate in their district, by a 51% to 39% margin. Second, the level of enthusiasm about [...]
Summary of Findings Americans are now more positive about the way things are going in Iraq than in the past few months, following the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and President Bush’s brief visit to the country. Optimism about the U.S. achieving its goals in Iraq, which sagged in the spring, has rebounded. But this [...]
President Bush’s job approval rating has fallen, and his personal favorability is down significantly as well, leading many Republicans to worry about the impact a weakened president will have on his party’s showing in the fall mid-term elections. Even among one of the president’s most supportive constituencies, white evangelical Protestants, Mr. Bush has suffered declines. [...]
Summary of Findings The American public is angry with Congress, and this is bad news for the Republican Party. The belief that this Congress has accomplished less than its predecessors is markedly higher than at any point in the past nine years, and by a wide margin Republican leaders are blamed for this. Many more [...]
Summary of Findings In the aftermath of the Dubai ports deal, President Bush’s approval rating has hit a new low and his image for honesty and effectiveness has been damaged. Yet the public uncharacteristically has good things to say about the role that Congress played in this high-profile Washington controversy. Most Americans (58%) believe Congress [...]
Summary of Findings Nine months before the midterm elections, the Democrats hold a sizable lead in the congressional horse race and an advantage on most major issues. Democrats lead by 50%-41% among registered voters in the test ballot, which is little changed from last September (52%-40%). While retaining a huge advantage on traditional party strengths [...]
Summary of Findings Public concern over Iran’s nuclear program has risen dramatically in the past few months. Today, 27% of Americans cite Iran as the country that represents the greatest danger to the United States. In October, just 9% pointed to Iran as the biggest danger to the U.S., while there was far more concern [...]
Summary of Findings The political debate over the Iraq war has grown more pointed in recent weeks, as President Bush has embarked upon a series of high-profile speeches defending the war and Democratic Rep. John Murtha has made headlines with his calls for a withdrawal of U.S. forces. But fundamental public attitudes toward the war [...]
Summary of Findings President George W. Bush’s approval ratings have fallen to another new low, amid a growing focus on alleged ethical lapses in his administration. Just 36% now believe that Bush has lived up to his campaign pledge to restore integrity to the White House. In contrast, fully 79% of Americans say the recent [...]
Summary of Findings President George W. Bush’s poll numbers are going from bad to worse. His job approval rating has fallen to another new low, as has public satisfaction with national conditions, which now stands at just 29%. And for the first time since taking office in 2001, a plurality of Americans believe that George [...]
Summary of Findings The American public is highly critical of President Bush’s handling of Hurricane Katrina relief efforts. Two-in-three Americans (67%) believe he could have done more to speed up relief efforts, while just 28% think he did all he could to get them going quickly. At the same time, Bush’s overall job approval rating [...]
President Bush’s margin last year over Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, 2.4 percentage points, was the smallest of any victorious presidential incumbent in history. He won a very close election. But in most of the country, the 2004 race wasn’t even close to being close. A Pew Research Center analysis shows that in the majority [...]
As Washington shuts down for August, President Bush’s report card from the public for the first half-year of his second term is not a good one compared with how the public graded Presidents Reagan and Clinton at a similar point in time. View chart (New York Times)
Summary of Findings A growing number of Americans believe that the war in Iraq has undermined the U.S. struggle against terrorism. Nearly half (47%) say the war in Iraq has hurt the war on terrorism, the highest percentage expressing that view since the war began in March 2003. Nonetheless, public support for an immediate withdrawal [...]
Summary of Findings Only about half of the American public is paying close attention to news reports that White House aide Karl Rove may have leaked classified information about a CIA agent. But 39% of the public and a solid majority of those closely following the reports (58%) believe that Rove should resign [...]
Summary of Findings Americans are critical of President Bush’s job performance in many policy areas, but negative opinions of his handling of the economy and Iraq are doing the most damage to his overall approval rating, which now stands at 43%. Just 35% approve of the president’s handling of the economy, down from 43% in [...]
Summary of Findings President George W. Bush is losing ground with the public in his efforts to build support for private retirement accounts in Social Security. Despite Bush’s intensive campaign to promote the idea, the percentage of Americans who say they favor private accounts has tumbled to 46% in Pew’s latest nationwide survey, down from [...]
Summary of Findings The public is more optimistic over the situation in Iraq as a result of that nation’s recent elections, but remains skeptical of the Bush administration’s decision to go to war. Moreover, the elections have not improved opinions of President Bush’s handling of Iraq. The survey, largely completed before the president’s European trip, [...]
Summary of Findings George W. Bush begins his second term with considerably less popular support than other recent incumbent presidents after their reelection. He also is proposing a second-term policy agenda that differs in several key respects from the public’s. Health care, aid for the poor, and the growing budget deficit are all increasingly important [...]
Summary of Findings Six weeks after President Bush’s victory, the divisions that were so apparent in the election show no signs of narrowing. The public remains split over the president’s job performance, the situation in Iraq, and the state of the national economy. But Bush voters are upbeat on all three questions 92% approve [...]
Summary of Findings President George W. Bush holds a slight edge over Senator John Kerry in the final days of Campaign 2004. The Pew Research Center’s final pre-election poll of 1,925 likely voters, conducted Oct. 27-30, finds Bush with a three-point edge (48% to 45% for Kerry); Ralph Nader draws 1%, and 6% are undecided. [...]
For the first time since the Vietnam era, foreign affairs and national security issues are looming larger than economic concerns in a presidential election. The Sept. 11 attacks and the two wars that followed not only have raised the stakes for voters as they consider their choice for president, but also have created deep [...]
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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.
