Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
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 [...]
What’s the new generation coming to? Are today’s young people apathetic and politically inert, as the stereotypes suggest? Are they more reluctant to get involved in politics and public life than generations past? What will American politics be like when they are eventually in charge? The answers are not what you might think. Not only [...]
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 [...]
Many Americans do not fit well within into either the conservative or liberal camps. Instead they find a home in one of two other U.S. political traditions, libertarian and populist, or defy attempts to pigeon-hole them. Read full article at pewresearch.org
At the start of this midterm election year, two heavyweight political trends are poised for a head-on collision. One is fueled by the low standing in the polls that the president and his party currently register, a position that invariably spells trouble for the “in party” in congressional elections. The other is driven by the [...]
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 The public has been hardly stirred by the flurry of major Washington news in the early days of 2006. Jack Abramoff’s admission that he bribed members of Congress has sparked little interest, with just 18% paying very close attention to news reports on the disgraced Washington lobbyist. An overwhelming majority of Americans [...]
Summary of Findings Americans express increasingly negative views of a wide range major institutions, reflecting strong discontent with national conditions. Over the past year, ratings have tumbled for the federal government and Congress. And it is not just Washington institutions that are being viewed less positively. Favorable opinions of business corporations are at their lowest [...]
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 Both major political parties have a problem with their approach toward religion, in the eyes of many Americans. More than four-in-ten say that liberals who are not religious have too much control over the Democratic Party, while an almost identical percentage says that religious conservatives have too much influence over the Republican [...]
Last week’s historic split in the House of Labor was driven, at least in part, by disagreements over whether the AFL-CIO should be focusing more on union organizing drives or electoral politics. Much is at stake, not just for the union movement but also for the political parties. Working class voters are a key swing [...]
Summary of Findings With an aging Supreme Court possibly facing major changes, the court’s public image has eroded significantly. Currently, 57% of Americans have a favorable opinion of the Supreme Court, with 30% expressing an unfavorable view. In the past, favorable views of the court typically surpassed 70%; even in January 2001, shortly after the [...]
Introduction Although former Vermont governor Howard Dean failed to win the Democratic presidential nomination, his campaign left a strong imprint on the political world. It assembled a network of over a half-million active supporters and contributors, raised over $20 million in mostly small donations online, and demonstrated the power of the internet as a networking [...]
Summary of Findings The American public is not happy with the nation’s political leadership. President Bush’s approval rating remains below 50%, and just 39% approve of the job performance of Republican congressional leaders. Despite the paltry ratings for GOP leaders, however, Democrats have failed to benefit. The public has about the same low regard for [...]
Summary of Findings This report is an excerpt from chapter one of the book Trends 2005, produced by the Pew Research Center. Public attitudes on national security are now much more strongly associated with partisan affiliation than they were in the late 1990s. A comprehensive study of long-term public values finds that beliefs about national [...]
During every presidential election, questions arise over the results of political polls and how those surveys are conducted. This year’s hot topic is the partisan composition of the leading national polls. Politicians and pundits alike now scrutinize a survey sample’s partisan split as closely as the horse-race results. Surveys that are deemed to have “too [...]
Summary of Findings As the Republicans gather in New York to nominate George W. Bush for a second term, more Americans see the Republican Party than the Democratic Party as friendly toward religion. And most express comfort with President Bush’s reliance on his religious beliefs in making policy decisions. On the issue of gay marriage, [...]
The Democratic Party has achieved a small gain in party affiliation and holds a 33%-29% edge over the GOP in Pew surveys conducted in 2004. This represents a modest shift from the two year period following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, when the Republican Party had drawn virtually even with the Democrats. The current [...]
Summary of Findings Sen. John Kerry enters the Democratic convention next week bolstered by a number of favorable trends in public opinion, although he remains locked in a statistical tie for voter support with President George W. Bush. His party is dominant on key domestic issues and at least competitive with the Republicans on every [...]
Southern Democrats More Culturally Conservative, Not So Different Otherwise
Over the past four years, the American electorate has been dealt a series of body blows, each capable of altering the political landscape. The voting system broke down in a presidential election. A booming economy faltered, punctuated by revelations of one of the worst business scandals in U.S. history. And the country endured a [...]
Summary of Findings A growing number of Americans oppose military action in Iraq, amid widespread concern over the potential negative consequences of war. For the first time since the Iraq debate intensified this summer, a majority of Democrats oppose the use of force to remove Saddam Hussein from power. And while a 55% majority still [...]
Survey Findings A year after Democrats took control of the Senate, the party’s rank-and-file give Democratic congressional leaders lower marks for performance than GOP adherents give their leadership. While 64% of Democrats approve of their leaders’ job performance, 80% of Republicans have a positive view of the job GOP leaders are doing. Consequently, the Democratic [...]
Introduction and Summary In the face of a struggling economy and the continuing war on terrorism, Americans begin 2002 upbeat about President George W. Bush’s job performance, his coming State of the Union address and the prospects for bipartisanship in Washington. Preventing future terrorist attacks and mending the economy are the biggest priorities this year. [...]
Introduction and Summary After three months in office, George W. Bush is doing about as well with the American public as did his predecessors, because Republicans love what they are seeing and Democrats are expressing only modest opposition to his stewardship of the country. Bush’s approval ratings among the GOP faithful are slightly higher than [...]
With all eyes now firmly focused on a general election match-up between Al Gore and George W. Bush, the big question is which way independents will go — particularly those independents who have been supporting John McCain. While McCain’s popularity has focused more attention on this crucial bloc, independents are the swing voters in every [...]
Foreword and Overview Foreword In 1987, we embarked on an ambitious project to better understand the nature of American politics. We identified a broad range of beliefs and values that underlie common political labels and that ultimately drive political action. A voter typology emerged from this effort which classifies the electorate into distinct groupings, defined [...]
Introduction and Summary The early presidential primary season may have front-loaded candidate announcements, political advertising and the media roadshow, but it’s all background noise to the average American voter. Nearly two-thirds of the public is paying little or no attention to the 2000 election, and knowledge of the presidential candidates and opinions about them are [...]
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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.
