There was a joke going around conservative circles during the mid-1960s that we conservatives were warned that if we voted for Barry Goldwater, America would get deeper into the Vietnam War. The punch line was that we did vote for Goldwater and America did get deeper into Vietnam.
The Discover U.S. Spending Monitor dipped 2.2 points to 86.5 in September, as consumers grew increasingly concerned about the U.S. economy and worked hard to hold-the-line on future spending plans.
Two-thirds (67%) of U.S. voters have a favorable opinion of Tom Brokaw, the moderator of tonight’s presidential debate, and nearly as many (62%) expect him to be neutral.
Fifty-four percent (54%) of Americans believe it is possible to drill offshore for oil without harming the environment, but nearly as many (48%) also acknowledge that there is a conflict between economic growth and environmental protection.
The Democrats’ lead has held steady this week in the latest edition of the Generic Congressional Ballot. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that, if given the choice, 45% of voters would choose their district’s Democratic candidate, while 37% would choose the Republican candidate.
Political independents now rank health care second among the issues they most want the presidential candidates to discuss, according to a Kaiser Health Tracking Poll for September. The No. 1 issue for independents, as well as for Democrats and Republicans, is the economy.
The only way Congress could pass a $700 billion economic bailout package last week was to spend an extra $110 billion that the federal government does not have.
Voters now trust Democrats more than Republicans on all ten key electoral issues tracked by Rasmussen Reports.
Seventy-two percent (72%) of U.S. voters say the United States is the best nation in the world, despite the country’s economic woes and criticism of American foreign policy from abroad.
Congress was front and center in the national news last week and the American people were far from impressed. If they could vote to keep or replace the entire Congress, 59% of voters would like to throw them all out and start over again.
As reform measures go, Proposition 11 -- the redistricting reform measure -- is hardly a transformational law likely to supercharge activists (of any political stripe) eager to make Sacramento more effective and more accountable to the public.
Like all polling firms, Rasmussen Reports weights its data to reflect the population at large. Among other targets, Rasmussen Reports weights data by political party affiliation using a dynamic weighting process.
The Vice Presidential debate on Thursday night attracted a bigger television audience than the Presidential debate a week earlier, but is not likely to have much of an impact on the results of Election 2008.
Politics ordinarily has a certain predictability. Yet presidential politics this year has often seemed to resemble what science writer James Gleick described in his book "Chaos."
Voters still had mixed feelings about the $700-billion financial rescue plan as it worked its torturous way through Congress last week, but for Republicans the country’s current economic mess is proving to be more and more of a drag at the polls.
She passed. He passed. Palin fared better going against Joe Biden than Katie Couric.
For all the Republicans' complaints about Gwen Ifill, the moderator's questions were softballs compared to what Sarah Palin faced from Katie Couric. Ifill did not demand that Palin list (OK, how about just name more than one?) Supreme Court decisions. She did not push on the issue of foreign policy experience.
Sixty-three percent (63%) of U.S. voters say Wall Street will benefit more than the average taxpayer from the revised $700-billion economic rescue plan the House is expected to vote on today. Just 22% think the taxpayer will benefit more.
In his first inaugural address, President Ronald Reagan delivered a line succinctly capturing the sentiment that elected him: “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”
The presidential debate season is just underway. The polls are in flux. The issue agenda--which has already shifted in the last month from the Sarah Palin effect to "lipstick on a pig" to the nation's worst economic crisis since the Depression--may shift again before Election Day.
