While South Carolina Democrats fret over how an unemployed political unknown with a felony charge hanging over him won their party’s Senate nomination, the first Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of the general election contest finds incumbent Republican Senator Jim DeMint far in the lead.
When challengers take on an incumbent member of Congress, they almost always get a bounce in the polls following a victory in a contested primary. That appears to be the case in South Dakota following State Representative Kristi Noem’s Republican Primary victory last Tuesday which earns her the right to challenge Congresswoman Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin.?
State Representative Nikki Haley is running stronger than her Republican Primary runoff opponent in the general election for South Carolina’s first open gubernatorial race since 1994.
Democrats see Bill Clinton as a key factor in embattled Senator Blanche Lincoln’s Arkansas primary win last week and a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 51% of voters have a favorable opinion of the former president. Forty-six percent (46%) regard him unfavorably.
How bad a defeat did labor unions suffer when Sen. Blanche Lincoln defeated their candidate and won the Arkansas Democratic runoff last week?
The Republicans still have the edge in Michigan’s tangled gubernatorial contest, but the race is a close one.
Republican candidates now hold a 10-point lead over Democrats on the Generic Congressional Ballot for the week ending Sunday, June 13. That ties the GOP's largest ever lead, first reached in April, since it first edged ahead of the Democrats a year ago.
For the second week in a row, 58% of Likely U.S. Voters favor repeal of the national health care plan adopted into law by Congress in late March. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds 36% oppose repeal.
Despite the continued struggle to stop the massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, the plurality (48%) of Likely Voters in California still favor offshore oil drilling, according to a Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in the state.
Illinois voters aren’t quite as adamant about it as they were when the story first broke, but 57% still say impeached Governor Rod Blagojevich should go to jail.
As part of a union-backed "independent" expenditure campaign in support of Attorney General Jerry Brown's gubernatorial effort, the California Nurses Association has formed a retinue that trails GOP gubernatorial hopeful Meg Whitman with a cartoonish figure named "Queen Meg." Have these true believers never noticed that the attorney general is the real thing when it comes to political royalty?
Seventy-one percent (71%) of Likely Voters in Pennsylvania support sending U.S. troops to the border with Mexico to help prevent illegal immigration, according to a new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in the state.
Of all the myths helping to sustain the unsustainable status quo in Washington, D.C., among the most widely accepted is the belief that a politician’s seniority translates into tangible economic benefits for his or her district. In fact, this perception works hand-in-glove with another central government myth – the one about politicians being able to create private sector jobs with your tax dollars in the first place.
The message from voters remains clear: Tax cuts yes, tax hikes no.
The buck stops at the president’s desk, but voters aren’t blaming President Obama for everything that goes wrong these days.
One-in-three Florida voters (33%) favor an amendment to the state’s constitution that prohibits offshore oil drilling off their coast.
Republican Paul LePage is the top vote getter in the race for governor of Maine following the winnowing down of the crowded contest in Tuesday’s primaries.
Thirty-four percent (34%) of Pennsylvania voters say it is possible for the United States to win the war in Afghanistan, but just as many (34%) disagree and say victory is not possible, according to a new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in the state.
Most voters continue to believe it would be better for the country if the majority of Congress is thrown out this November, but they also remain unconvinced that a Republican takeover will make a noticeable difference.
Some years ago, the late New York Times and Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist William Safire wrote a great column comparing politicians to plumbers. It was during one of those periods when (like now) experience had become a dirty word in politics and incumbency was a veritable curse. There was nothing worse you could say about someone than to call him a "career politician" -- just what California Republican gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman called her rival for the office only yesterday.
