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Gallup delivers two blasts at the Obama administration today for its handling of the economy. The first comes in its daily tracking poll, which reacted rather badly to Barack Obama’s speech from the White House yesterday. His approval rating dropped three points to its previous low of 40% after only one cycle of polling. Disapproval rose back to 50%, up two points from the day before. That sharp drop could amplify over the next couple of days, especially considering the beating Obama is taking across the political spectrum for his ill-considered rehash of an address. It’s possible that we will...

A majority of voters reject the depiction of Tea Party activists as “terrorists,” a new Rasmussen poll shows … but not a terribly large majority, given the ridiculously demagogic attack it represents. Fifty-five percent say that the Tea Party didn’t act like “economic terrorists” during the negotiations over the debt ceiling and deficit spending, while 29% — more than one in four voters — see equivalency between the Tea Party’s use of representative government and, say, al-Qaeda: Democrats and their media friends have charged the Tea Party with being economic terrorists during the congressional budget debates, but most voters don’t...

Amidst riots in central Europe that have now spread to London and a debt downgrade that threatens to plunge the United States into a double-dip recession, Americans’ lack of confidence in their leadership is so crippled that they are now “pre-revolutionary,” according to pollster Pat Caddell. A new Rasmussen poll shows that just 17 per cent of Americans believe that the U.S. government has the consent of the governed, an all time low. This dovetails with a record low for Congress’ approval rating, which stands at a paltry 6 per cent, while 46 per cent of Americans think most members...

Six in 10 Americans think the economy is still getting worse and 75 percent believe the nation is doing badly, according to a CNN poll released Monday. The poll, conducted this weekend after ratings agency Standard & Poor’s downgraded the nation’s AAA credit rating for the first time in its history, marked a 24 percentage point increase since April of people who believe the economy is in a downturn, CNN said.

The Rasmussen Consumer Index, which measures the economic confidence of consumers on a daily basis, fell another point on Monday. At 61.5, consumer confidence is down three points since Standard & Poor’s downgraded the federal government’s credit rating. Seventy percent (70%) now believe that the economy is getting worse. That’s up from 45% at the beginning of 2011. Data for these updates is derived from a series of nightly telephone interviews and reported on a three-day rolling average basis. As a result, today’s update includes two days of data collection after Standard & Poor’s announced their decision to downgrade the...

Residents of 16 states and the District of Columbia gave President Obama approval ratings of 50% or higher during the first half of 2011, led by the District of Columbia, Connecticut, Maryland, and Delaware. Idaho residents had the least positive appraisal of his performance, with 27% approving. These results are based on aggregated Gallup Daily tracking data from January through June, consisting of nearly 90,000 interviews nationally. Obama averaged 47% approval on a nationwide basis during this time. Each state's data is weighted so it is demographically representative of the state's population. The full data for each state can be...

The percentage of Americans who expressly state that they are supporters of the Tea Party movement is currently about as large at 22 percent of the population as the 21 percent who say they are liberals, according to recent but separate Gallup polls. Meanwhile, at 41 percent of the population, according to Gallup, self-described conservatives outnumber both Tea Party movement supporters and liberals by nearly 2-to-1. In separate polls done on July 27 and August 2, 23 and 22 percent of respondents told Gallup they considered themselves supporters of the Tea Party movement. These polls (each of which was conducted...

Little more than a year ago, most Americans did not know enough about the Tea Party to have an opinion. Now, more people have opinions, and they are hardly positive. The percentage of people with an unfavorable view of the Tea Party in a New York Times/CBS News Poll this week was higher than it has been since the first time the question was asked, in April 2010. Forty percent of those polled this week characterized their view as “not favorable,” compared with 18 percent in the first poll. In the first poll, a plurality, 46 percent, said they had...

Politicos and pundits are waiting with baited breath on Virginia Attorney General Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II’s next move. Re-election? Senate? Governor? He has said his current plans are to run for re-election but has not ruled out a bid for governor in 2013. If a poll released Tuesday by the Democratic-leaning firm Public Policy Polling is any indication, he’d have more than a fair shot at the GOP nomination. Among Republican primary voters, Mr. Cuccinelli, who has made a name for himself filing high-profile lawsuits against the federal government over health care and carbon emissions, leads Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling...

At a time when the Department of Justice is following the lead of fringe groups like the ACLU and MALDEF, in suing Arizona and Alabama for their common sense immigration enforcement laws, a new poll shows record support for these approaches by the American people. According to a new Rasmussen poll, a whopping 75% of Americans support AZ-style penalties vs. employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens, and 65% say police should automatically check immigration status during traffic stops - both record highs and hallmarks of Arizona laws which the Obama Administration has tried to stop. In addition, 67% say a...

Just how badly has Barack Obama’s standing dropped this year? Even killing Osama bin Laden hasn’t kept his re-elect numbers from declining significantly. Pew’s latest survey shows Obama only one point ahead of a generic Republican candidate, a statistical tie, but his 41% score is even worse news: The sizeable lead Barack Obama held over a generic Republican opponent in polls conducted earlier this year has vanished as his support among independent voters has fallen off. Currently, 41% of registered voters say they would like to see Barack Obama reelected, while 40% say they would prefer to see a Republican...

Just 17% of Likely U.S. Voters now say the country is heading in the right direction...the lowest measured since January 11, 2009.

With all of the spotlights on the high-stakes debt maneuverings by President Obama and Speaker John Boehner the last few days, few people noticed what Vermont's Sen. Bernie Sanders said: "I think it would be a good idea if President Obama faced some primary opposition." This is political treason 469 days before a presidential election. Yes, yes, this is just a crusty old New England independent for now, albeit one who caucuses loyally with Harry Reid's Democratic posse. But while most of the media focuses on Republican Boehner and the tea party pressures on him to raise the debt limit...

According to an explosive document, investigators from the U.S. military’s top investigative office found evidence that a Pentagon survey pivotal to the [DADT] repeal was engineered months prior to its release, and was deliberately skewed in later media leaks, with the intention of swaying Congress towards repeal despite opposition from combat troops. An unredacted version of the April 2011 report by the Defense department’s Inspector General was leaked to the conservative Center for Military Readiness, and a slightly redacted version was confirmed as authentic by a Defense spokesperson to LifeSiteNews.com. The authors found that Jeh Johnson, a co-chair of the...

Democrats' advantage over Republicans in partisan affiliation is way down from 2008 as white voters have turned against them, according to a poll released Friday by the Pew Research Center. While minority voters continue to support Democrats in large numbers, what was just a two-point Republican edge among whites in 2008 has grown to a 13-point advantage today. Republican gains among white voters are "particularly pronounced among the young and poor," according to the report. White voters under age 30 now break for Republicans by an 11-point margin; in 2008 they broke for Democrats by a seven-point margin. This could...

While Washington wrangles over how to avoid defaulting on the government’s massive debt load, voters are worried the final deal will raise taxes too much but won't cut spending enough. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 62% of Likely U.S. Voters are worried more that Congress and President Obama will raise taxes too much rather than too little in any deal to end the debt ceiling debate. Just 26% fear they’ll raise taxes too little. Twelve percent (12%) aren’t sure. (To see survey question wording, click here.) Similarly, 56% worry that Congress and the president will cut...

Majority of US Jews disapproves of Obama's Arab-Israeli conflict policy; separate poll shows Muslims blame West for domestic problems. WASHINGTON – US President Barack Obama handily defeats his current Republican presidential opponents among Jewish voters, according to a poll put out by J Street Thursday. At the same time, the majority of American Jews disapproves of his handling of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the poll found. Obama currently enjoys 63 percent of the American Jewish vote compared to 24% for Mitt Romney and 67% when facing off against Michele Bachmann, who received 19% support, according to the poll. Romney, the former...

Another poll, this one from Public Policy Polling, finds Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) leading the pack of GOP presidential contenders. Michele Bachmann’s momentum continues to build and she’s taken first place by the smallest of margins on PPP’s newest national Presidential poll. 21% of Republican primary voters say she’s their top choice to 20% for Mitt Romney, 12% for Rick Perry, 11% for Herman Cain, 9% for Ron Paul, 7% for Newt Gingrich, 5% for Tim Pawlenty, and 3% for Jon Huntsman. Bachmann’s rise has been fueled by her appeal to voters on the far right- and their skepticism about...

President Obama on Monday was asked about a poll showing that the majority of Americans were opposed to raising the debt limit. Obama responded expansively, in essence saying two things. First, that he didn’t think the public was knowledgeable enough to weigh in on this subject (“…The public is not paying close attention to the ins and outs of how a Treasury option goes. They shouldn’t. They're worrying about their family; they're worrying about their jobs; they're worrying about their neighborhood. They've got a lot of other things on their plate. We're paid to worry about it”). Those Americans following...

The latest Gallup poll shows that President Obama's approval rating is in free-fall. Just 42% of adults now approve of the job Obama is doing as President. Fully 50% disapprove. This latest poll is a three-day rolling average taken from July 13th to July 15th. Comparing Obama's current poll numbers with those from just a month or two ago shows a rapid decline...