Economic confidence among small business owners declined sharply in September amid rising concerns about economic conditions for their businesses and a bleak vision of where the economy is headed. The Discover(R) Small Business WatchSM fell to 74.6 in September, down 12.3 points from August.
As Congress prepares to vote on a proposed economic rescue plan, opposition to the measure has declined significantly. A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey conducted Sunday found that 33% of Likely Voters now favor the plan while 32% are opposed and 35% are not sure.
In the midst of an economic crisis and an historic presidential election, voting Americans are evenly divided as to whether the nation’s best days lie ahead or in the past. Still, the current results are among the most optimistic of the past two years.
Before getting to Friday night's debate, let us look at what happened before the debate.Yes, John McCain's suspension of his campaign earlier in the week and call for a delay of Friday's debate were campaign stunts.
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 winner of the first Presidential debate was moderator and PBS television personality Jim Lehrer. After earlier polls showing that most voters expect the moderators to be biased, 76% say Lehrer was neutral.
Fifty-one percent (51%) of Americans think politicians are more interested in gaining additional power than in fixing the economy with the proposed $700-billion taxpayer-backed financial rescue plan.
The more voters learn about the proposed $700-billion taxpayer-backed Wall Street rescue plan, the less they like it. Most voters remain largely unworried about their own money, too.
You can sum up much of 20th century history by saying that in the 1930s Americans decided that markets didn't work and government did, and that in the 1970s Americans decided that government didn't work and markets did.
Official Washington and the two major presidential candidates seem more shook up by Wall Street’s mounting woes than the average taxpayer and voter.
The single-biggest mistake in the Paulson bank-rescue-plan marketing effort has been the failure to explain clearly how taxpayers are going to recoup $700 billion used to buy toxic assets at auction in order to unfreeze the banking system.
At 1:00 p.m. Eastern on Friday afternoon, Rasmussen Markets data suggested there was a 68% chance the federal bailout bill will pass Congress by the end of this month. Expectations soared as high as 93% yesterday before sinking to a low of 60% early Friday morning.
McCain has transformed a minority in both houses of Congress and a losing position in the polls into the key role in the bailout package, the main man around whom the final package will take shape. He arrived in Washington to find the Democrats working with the Bush Administration to pass an unpopular $700 billion bailout.
For younger people especially, text messaging is becoming as common or more common than talking on the cellphone, the latter already the bane of many stuck in heavy traffic. Many states and localities have already restricted cellphone usage in a car, and there's a growing call for limits on text messaging next.
Nearly half (48%) of voters disagree with John McCain’s request to postpone the first presidential debate tonight because of the country’s ongoing financial problems. Thirty four percent (34%) think McCain is right, and nearly one-out-of-five voters (18%) are undecided.
Alcee Hastings used to be a federal judge. Then he got impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate. Now he's a congressman from Florida. People have a right to vote for whomever they want, even one of the six federal judges in America ever to be removed by Congress.
Presidential debate season is upon us. That means John McCain, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Sarah Palin are traveling around the country with huge binders of prep materials under their arms---and dreams of an eight-year relationship with the Secret Service dancing in their heads.
The Democrats’ lead in the Generic Congressional Ballot has changed little over the past week. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that, if given the choice, 45% of voters would choose their district’s Democratic candidate, while 38% would choose the Republican candidate.
Only 30% of U.S. voters think the federal government should step in to rescue the country’s troubled financial markets, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.
Until Wednesday afternoon, when GOP presidential nominee John McCain announced that he was heading to Washington to work with congressional leaders and the Bushies to craft a better bailout bill, both McCain and Democratic candidate Barack Obama clearly had believed that the last place they wanted to be seen was in Washington.
