Free Republic

As President Obama prepares to announce new executive actions on gun control Monday, a newly released Gallup Poll shows that "guns/gun control" ranked near the bottom of Americans' most pressing concerns in 2015. In fact, guns/gun control ranked 19th out of 23 top problems facing the country last year.

Almost half of Americans, 49%, say the federal government poses "an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens," similar to what was found in previous surveys conducted over the last five years. When this question was first asked in 2003, less than a third of Americans held this attitude. ... Overall, Americans who agree that the government is an immediate threat tend to respond with very general complaints echoing the theme that the federal government is too big and too powerful, and that it has too many laws. They also cite nonspecific allegations that the government violates...

Americans believe that there are six times as many gays and lesbians in the population as there actually are, according to new data released by Gallup. According to Gallup’s tracking surveys in the first four of 2015, 3.8 percent of the U.S. adult population says they are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. However, in a survey conducted May 6-10, Gallup asked: “Just your best guess, what percent of Americans today would you say are gay or lesbian?” On average, Americans said it was 23.2 percent. …

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, was launched five years ago but more Americans today say they are unhappy with the law than those who claim to be happy with it, a recent Gallup poll confirmed. The survey also showed that in the half-decade the law has been in place, support for it has never surpassed 48 percent, and in November 2014, only 37 percent of Americans said they approved of Obamacare. In the latest survey, conducted April 1-4, only 44 percent of Americans said they approved of the law, while 50 percent said they...

A significant majority of Americans — some 77% of those polled — see the “development of nuclear weapons by Iran” as a “critical threat”; another 16% see it as “important but not critical”, according to new numbers from Gallup. With US-Iran talks reportedly set to resume Friday, the poll, which asks Americans to assess a variety of threats to U.S. interests as “critical”, “important but not critical”, or “not important” — will likely take on a new and ominous significance. The poll placed the question of Iranian nukes near the top of the list of threats Gallup asked about, behind...

With six years down and just two left in which to build a legacy, President Barack Obama has posted his lowest-ever average annual approval rating. A Gallup poll finds that Obama, in the one-year period between Jan. 20, 2014, and Monday, posted an approval average of just 42.6 percent. During their sixth year in office, Presidents Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon showed their lowest approval rating as well, with the sixth-year approval rating of every president since 1945 averaging just 45.5 percent, Politico notes. President George W. Bush tapped out the lowest at 37.3 percent, while President Bill...

Andrew DuganNovember 12, 2014 WASHINGTON, D.C. -- After the midterm elections that saw the Democratic Party suffer significant losses in Congress, a record-low 36% of Americans say they have a favorable opinion of the party, down six percentage points from before the elections. The Republican Party's favorable rating, at 42%, is essentially unchanged from 40%. This marks the first time since September 2011 that the Republican Party has had a higher favorability rating than the Democratic Party. Republican and Democratic Party Favorables, 1992-2014 These results come from a Nov. 6-9 Gallup poll, conducted after Republicans enjoyed a breathtaking sweep of...

John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, as well Valerie Jarrett and Barack Obama, should take heed. By a commanding 17 point margin, Americans want Congress to take the lead, according to a new Gallup Poll (hat tip: Bloomberg and Instapundit): Following the midterm election that some have termed a Republican wave, the majority of Americans want the Republicans in Congress -- rather than President Barack Obama -- to have more influence over the direction the country takes in the coming year. This is a switch from early 2012 when a slim plurality, 46%, wanted Obama to prevail in steering the nation....

The leaders on Capitol Hill have long been unpopular with voters nationwide, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s favorability rating has taken a steep plunge this election year, showed a new poll released Monday. The Galup poll found that the favorability score for Mr. Reid, Nevada Democrat, dropped from 27 percent in April to 21 percent today. “Reid’s image has consistently tilted negative since he emerged as a nationally known figure in 2008.

Yesterday, Gallup released a poll showing a few things, and none of them are good for Democrats.* The first is that Republicans had expanded their lead over Democrats as the party people believe is best equipped to protect the United States from terrorism: The Republicans’ lead over the Democrats on the question of terrorism is, as you can see, at historic levels. Not since the poll began has the GOP’s lead been this large. As RedState’s Dear Leader Erick Erickson notes, this is what happens when you don’t have a coherent anti-terrorism strategy: At the beginning of this year, President...

In its latest poll on confidence in U.S. institutions, Gallup reports that Americans’ faith in the three major news media platforms—television news, newspapers, and news on the Internet—is at or tied with record lows, and that trust in Internet or online news topped television news for the first time. The number of Americans who have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in newspapers has dropped from its 1979 peak of 51% to 22%, while their confidence in television news has fallen from a high of 46% in 1993 to just 18% today. Online news finished slightly ahead of...

Explore...Obama's approval ratings...

For the first time, more than half of Americans, 53 percent, believe President Obama is not respected by other world leaders, compared with the 43 percent who felt that way last year. A new Gallup World Affairs poll, conducted Feb. 6-9, found that Democrats and independents are mainly responsible for the slide in Obama’s ratings, since many Republicans were already convinced that world leaders don’t respect the president. Gallup noted that Americans’ opinions “have shifted dramatically” in the past year, after being relatively stable from 2010 to 2013. …

Forty-two percent of Americans, on average, identified as political independents in 2013, the highest Gallup has measured since it began conducting interviews by telephone 25 years ago. Meanwhile, Republican identification fell to 25%, the lowest over that time span. At 31%, Democratic identification is unchanged from the last four years but down from 36% in 2008. The results are based on more than 18,000 interviews with Americans from 13 separate Gallup multiple-day polls conducted in 2013. In each of the last three years, at least 40% of Americans have identified as independents. These are also the only years in Gallup's...

A recent Gallup poll refutes the claim made by Barack Obama on March 9, 2008 that “we are no longer a Christian nation.” Gallup found that three quarters of all Americans - a supermajority - identify themselves as Christians, with only five percent saying they are practicing members of a non-Christian faith. “We find, looking at our data, that America does in fact remain a predominantly Christian nation,” Dr. Frank Newport, Gallup’s editor in chief, said of the poll released on Christmas Eve. “Now, our overall estimation of what percent of Americans identify with the Christian religion depends a little...

That escalated quickly. Seventy-two percent of Americans say big government is a greater threat to the U.S. in the future than is big business or big labor, a record high in the nearly 50-year history of this question. The prior high for big government was 65% in 1999 and 2000. Big government has always topped big business and big labor, including in the initial asking in 1965, but just 35% named it at that time. It wasn’t so very long ago — as in, 2009, hem hem — when Americans’ primary concern for big government as a threat to the...

Record High in U.S. Say Big Government Greatest Threat Now 72% say it is greater threat than big business or big labor PRINCETON, NJ -- Seventy-two percent of Americans say big government is a greater threat to the U.S. in the future than is big business or big labor, a record high in the nearly 50-year history of this question. The prior high for big government was 65% in 1999 and 2000. Big government has always topped big business and big labor, including in the initial asking in 1965, but just 35% named it at that time.

Entering the world of official Washington is a bit like the mythical trip Alice took through the looking glass. Everything is upside-down and nonsensical. This was highlighted most recently in a Wall Street Journal article about how the American people have “a deepening distaste for all Washington institutions” and “angst over Washington dysfunction.” At the same time, the reporter noted that Americans were “surprisingly upbeat about their own lives.” Solid majorities were happy with their personal finances and “more optimistic about the economy.” This disconnect is surprising only to those who have gone through the D.C. looking glass and believe...

Over three-quarters of Americans (77%) say religion is losing its influence on American life, while 20% say religion's influence is increasing. These represent Americans' most negative evaluations of the impact of religion since 1970, although similar to the views measured in recent years. Americans over the years have generally been more likely to say religion is losing rather than increasing its influence in American life. In addition to the previous peak in views that religion was losing its influence measured in 1969 and 1970, at least 60% of Americans thought religion was losing its influence in 1991-1994, in 1997 and...

“At this point…Gallup Daily tracking of likely voter preferences suggests Obama has lost more support than he could afford to, given his current [51% to 45%] deficit to his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney.” (1) If this sounds like good news, the Gallup 7 day tracking poll has even better. Mitt Romney has been ahead of Barack Obama for the past several days with the October 27 result of 51-45 once again putting the challenger over the 50% level into territory which Obama has failed to approach for a very long time. And now, according to Gallup’s “demographics of likely voters,”...