What They Told Us: Reviewing Last Week’s Key Polls

Saturday, August 29, 2009

The death this week of longtime Democratic Senator Edward M. “Ted” Kennedy means one of two things for the troubled health care reform plan proposed by President Obama: Either the plan has lost one of its most powerful advocates or now its supporters have an emotional rallying point to successfully push for passage. Only time will tell.

For now, the good news for the president and congressional Democrats is that support for their proposed health care legislation has stopped falling. The bad news is that most voters still oppose the plan.
Perhaps even more worrisome for backers of the plan is that most voters also think they understand it better than Congress does - and about as well as the president himself.
But then 62% of Americans say taxpayers, not bureaucrats, are the best judges of how to spend their own money, and that’s why it’s always better to cut taxes than increase government spending.
Seventy percent (70%) of voters favor a government that offers fewer services and imposes lower taxes over one that provides more services with higher taxes. That’s the highest level measured in nearly three years.
While leading Democrats have been crying foul about Republican opposition to the health care effort and are talking about going it alone, just 24% of voters think the Democrats should pass a bill that is opposed by all Republicans in Congress. Fifty-eight percent (58%) believe the Democrats should change the bill to win support from "a reasonable number” of GOP legislators.
Democrats aren’t helped by the worsening numbers for one of their most visible leaders in Washington. Sixty-four percent (64%) now have an unfavorable opinion of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Obama’s approval ratings remain in the negatives, too, in the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll.
This summer brought a significant shift in voter preferences in the Generic Congressional Ballot. Republican congressional candidates once again lead Democrats by a 43% to 38% margin this week, the ninth straight ballot on which the GOP has held a modest advantage. It is important to note, however, that the recent shift is not because Republicans have been gaining support, but because Democratic support has been falling.
Still, in Kennedy’s home state of Massachusetts, one state that already has mandatory universal health coverage, 53% of voters favor the health care reform plan proposed by Obama and congressional Democrats. Unlike most other states, the number who have strong opinions on the topic are nearly evenly divided. Expect to hear more about the Massachusetts model as the health care debate continues.
The health care reform push may be losing some of its momentum with this week’s announcement of an even higher federal deficit, continuing high unemployment and other signs of a sickly economy. Voters see deficit reduction as the most important priority for the President. Health care reform is a distant second.
Nearly eight-of-10 American adults (79%) know someone who is out of work and looking for a job. A government job looks less attractive to Americans than it did at the beginning of the year, but it remains the top employment choice in today’s economic environment.
New government data suggests the housing market may be slowly beginning to revive, but for most Americans, short-term and long-term views of that market remain basically unchanged. Just 19% of American homeowners think the value of their home will go up in the next year, while 27% expect the value to go down. Those numbers turn around dramatically, though, when homeowners are asked about the housing market five years from now.
Fifty-nine percent (59%) say buying a home is still the best investment a family can make, but that’s down seven points from September of last year.
The Rasmussen Consumer and Investors Indexes, which measure daily confidence, have stayed in a narrow range over recent weeks. Both are still up from the first of the year but down from a week ago. Seventy-six percent (76%) still think the United States is in a recession.
Thirty-five percent (35%) of adults say the federal "cash for clunkers" program to encourage sales of newer, more energy-efficient cars was good for the U.S. economy. Twenty-three percent (23%) say the program hurt the economy, and 27% say it had no impact.
Next up is a “cash for clunkers" program offering government cash rebates to those who buy new, energy-efficient appliances. Thirty-nine percent (39%) of Americans favor the plan, but 49% think it’s a bad idea.
Several national security issues also promise to make things more complicated for the president when Congress returns a week-and-a-half from now.
Forty-nine percent (49%) of voters disagree with the Justice Department’s decision to investigate the treatment and possible torture of terrorists during the Bush administration. Thirty-six percent (36%) agree with Attorney General Eric Holder’s naming on Monday of a veteran prosecutor to probe the CIA’s handling of terrorists under the previous administration.
Most voters (54%) think the investigation of the Central Intelligence Agency threatens U.S. national security.
Fifty-five percent (55%) now oppose Obama’s decision to close the prison camp for suspected terrorists at the Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba where some of the CIA abuses are alleged to have taken place. Voters were evenly divided on the question when the president announced his decision in January, but support for closing the controversial facility has been falling ever since.
Seventy-five percent (75%) of voters are at least somewhat concerned that dangerous terrorists will be set free if the Guantanamo prison is closed and some prisoners are transferred to other countries. More worrisome for many is the possibility that Guantanamo inmates will be housed in prisons in the United States. Nationally, 58% oppose moving some of those suspected terrorists to a soon-to-closed maximum-security prison in Michigan. But in that economically devastated state, 39% favor housing the inmates at the state prison 145 miles north of Detroit, while 50% are opposed.
Just two percent (2%) of Michigan voters rate the economy as good or excellent, and 79% rate it as poor. These numbers have changed little since June.
In other polls last week:
-- Eighty-two percent (82%) of Americans disagree with Scotland’s decision to release the terminally ill terrorist convicted of blowing up a Pan Am jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, so he could return home to die in his native Libya.
-- For the second straight week, just one-third (34%) of likely voters believe the United States is heading in the right direction, but that's up seven points from the week Obama took office in January and compares with 10% in late September and early October of last year, the low point in two years of surveying on the question.
-- Republican challenger Chris Christie continues to lead incumbent Democrat Jon Corzine in New Jersey’s closely watched gubernatorial race, but his lead is slipping a bit.
-- Sixty percent (60%) of Americans say there is too much media coverage of the president’s personal life and family. Obama asked the media to back off this week while he and his family were on vacation in Martha’s Vineyard.
-- In the first poll since Judge Sonia Sotomayor joined the U.S. Supreme Court, 34% of voters say the high court is too liberal, up 11 points from two years ago. But the plurality (41%) say the court’s ideological make-up is about right.
-- Sixty-three percent (63%) of voters in Michigan, the home state of the Big Three automakers, say Ford will be the most successful of the companies in five years’ time. Just 17% say General Motors will be the most successful of the three at the end of that period, while five percent (5%) say Chrysler will come out on top.
-- Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick has an even longer way to go now if he wants to win a second term next year. The Democratic incumbent is losing support and trails the most prominent Republicans in the race to date.
-- Fifty-one percent (51%) of American adults say alcohol is more dangerous than marijuana. Just 19% disagree and say pot is worse.
-- At least 25 well-known colleges and universities nationwide have asked Anheuser-Busch to drop its “Fan Cans” campaign, which features school colors on Bud Light cans, amidst fears it will promote underage drinking. Fifty-two percent (52%) of Americans oppose the company’s plan to sell beer in school colors.
-- In a prediction challenge issued in early May, Rasmussen Reports asked adults which film would be the summer's biggest opening weekend blockbuster. Eighteen percent (18%) correctly predicted that "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" would earn the most money in its first weekend of release. The film pulled in over $108 million that weekend.
Remember, if it’s in the news, it’s in our polls. Check out the latest numbers on our home page and keep up with our daily Presidential Tracking Poll. Premium Members get access to more data, a morning briefing from Scott Rasmussen and an advance look at key findings.
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