A recent survey based on several government studies finds that many of those the federal government says are living in poverty have a decent place to live, adequate food on the table and two color TVs, among other amenities, and most Americans don't regard that as being poor.
Government student loans are another area under the congressional budget-cutting microscope. Most voters favor their continuation for poor and middle-income students but are decidedly less enthusiastic about outright government grants for schooling that don’t need to be repaid.
As the Iowa Straw Poll in Ames was wrapping up Saturday, a reporter rushed onto the floor of Iowa State University's Hilton Coliseum, where the press was filing their stories. She went up to her colleagues with what she said was a new, breaking quote from Michele Bachmann: Bachmann, the reporter said, had just vowed to make Barack Obama a "one-term president."
Several columnists recently referred to the tea party "patriots" as terrorists. The terrorist label set off a stormy protest among the group's legion of message writers.
While many Democrats, journalists, and establishment Republicans have been critical of the Tea Party, most Republicans think the grass roots smaller government movement will be a plus for their party in next year’s presidential race.
A plurality of U.S. voters continues to say they’re politically conservative when it comes to fiscal issue, but voters are more evenly divided on their social views.
Perceptions of home values among homeowners has improved little over the past month, though more than half still believe their home is worth more than when they bought it.
Voters are showing less concern that anti-immigration efforts will also end up violating civil rights and most continue to oppose automatic citizenship for children born in the United States to illegal immigrants.
President Obama has found himself in the cellar for the first time since taking office: He fell to 39% in Gallup Poll tracking over the past weekend. Obama may or may not have a month or months when his average is below 40%. Still, it is a number that has already imprinted itself on the mind of the political community.
Pundits lately have been comparing Barack Obama to Jimmy Carter, suggesting he is a likely loser in 2012. But my American Enterprise Institute colleague Norman Ornstein, writing in The New Republic, compares Obama to Harry S. Truman, suggesting he may outperform the polls and win.
While voters feel stronger than they have in a year that politics in Washington will grow more partisan in the near future, they say Democrats in Congress are behaving more bipartisan than Republicans are.
Just 15% of Likely U.S. Voters now say the country is heading in the right direction, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey taken the week ending Sunday, August 14.
More Americans than ever predict they will be paying higher interest rates a year from now, despite the fact that most say they’re paying about the same in interest as they were last year.
Voter confidence about the short-term course of the war in Afghanistan has fallen to its lowest level in nearly two years, while confidence about the direction in Iraq over the next six months has dropped to the lowest point in almost five years of surveying.
Voter support for continued military action in Libya continues to fall along with the number of voters who think dictator Moammar Gaddafi will be removed from power as a result.
Gov. Rick Perry scorched the political pot on Tuesday with a red-hot rhetorical attack on Fed-head Ben Bernanke. When asked about the Fed reopening the monetary spigots, Perry said, “If this guy prints more money between now and the election, I don’t know what y’all would do to him in Iowa, but we -- we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas.”
On the heels of the downgrade of the U.S. credit rating, unhappiness with the debt ceiling debates and more unemployment and housing woes, more voters than ever worry that the federal government will not do enough to help the economy.
In the weeks during and since the debt-ceiling debate, the media, pushed by the Democratic Party, has peddled the propaganda that our government is broken -- because the Republicans in the House of Representatives negotiated a better deal than the liberals wanted.
For the fifth week in a row, a generic Republican candidate edges President Obama in a hypothetical 2012 election match-up.
Texas Governor Rick Perry, the new face in the race for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, has jumped to a double-digit lead over Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann with the other announced candidates trailing even further behind.
