Free Republic

Less than a week before its October term is set to begin, the US Supreme Court became a spectacle of sound and fury on Wednesday over a landmark decision handed down three months ago declaring that the death penalty for child rapists is cruel and unusual punishment. At issue was whether the high court would revisit the landmark 5-to-4 decision after revelations last summer that contradicted the majority justices' conclusion that a "national consensus" had emerged against the death penalty for the rape of a child. The June 25 decision said only six states had laws authorizing capital punishment for...

One of the most striking aspects of our political discourse, particularly during election time, is how efficiently certain views that deviate from the elite consensus are banished from sight -- simply prohibited -- even when those views are held by the vast majority of citizens. The University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes -- the premiere organization for surveying international public opinion -- released a new survey a couple of weeks ago regarding public opinion on the Israel-Palestinian conflict, including opinion among American citizens, and this is what it found: A new WorldPublicOpinion.org poll of 18 countries finds that...

Wars of Ideas and THE War of Ideas Authored by Dr. Antulio J. Echevarria, II. Added June 12, 2008 Type: Monograph 62 Pages   Cost: Free The author discusses several types of wars of ideas in an effort to achieve a better understanding of what wars of ideas are. That knowledge, in turn, can help inform strategy. It is important to note, for instance, that because ideas are interpreted subjectively, it is not likely that opposing parties will "win" each other over by means of an ideational campaign alone. Hence, physical events, whether intended or incidental, typically play determining...

The country is frustrated. Democrats say Americans want change from Bush administration policies. That much of the country was also frustrated when Democrats were in charge apparently has escaped them. A new Washington Post-ABC News Poll finds that nearly three-quarters of those surveyed believe the country is on the wrong track. They are deeply pessimistic about the future and dissatisfied with Washington’s corrosive political environment. The public believes most politicians are out for themselves and not the people. They also think most politicians say and do the bidding of their respective polarizing groups and rarely say what they mean, or...

Results from an unprecedented public opinion poll of the Afghan people taken by Environics Research couldn’t have come at a worse time for Canadian Liberal leader Stephane Dion, NDP chief Jack Layton, and all others in Canada calling for our troops to leave Afghanistan post-haste.....

THE war in Iraq is the single most important continuing news issue right now. Public opinion about the war is a critical part of that story. That’s why when a finding about the war in a New York Times poll could not be easily explained, the paper went back and did another poll on the very same subject. It turns out the poll had gotten it right. Support for the initial invasion of Iraq, as measured by a question The New York Times/CBS News Poll has asked since December 2003, increased modestly compared with two months ago. The Times and...

A crowd of 100 stunned stargazers brought a town centre to a standstill when five mysterious UFOs were spotted hovering in the sky. Drinkers spilled out of pubs, motorists stopped to gawp and camera phones were aimed upwards as the five orbs, in a seeming formation, hovered above Stratford-Upon-Avon for half an hour. The unidentified flying objects lit up the otherwise clear night sky above Shakespeare's birthplace in Warwickshire on Saturday. [snip]

Americans’ support for the initial invasion of Iraq has risen somewhat as the White House has continued to ask the public to reserve judgment about the war until at least the fall. In a New York Times/CBS News poll conducted over the weekend, 42 percent of Americans said that looking back, taking military action in Iraq was the right thing to do, while 51 percent said the United States should have stayed out of Iraq. But two-thirds of those polled said the United States should reduce its forces in Iraq, or remove them altogether. Support for the invasion had been...

California Sen. Dianne Feinstein says the public emotion surging around efforts to overhaul the nation's immigration policy is the greatest she has seen since her 1992 election. The Democrat said the topic hasn't translated into the 30,000-plus phone calls to her office that would mean "something is really going on" in the nation?s most populous state, but the enthusiasm of opinion is fervent. "We're dealing with an issue about which people have very strong, very deeply set views," Mrs. Feinstein said. She said most of the nearly 8,000 calls her office has fielded have been "very hostile and very negative"...

ASSOCIATED PRESSPeople think the Democratic-led Congress is doing just as dreary a job as President Bush after four months of bitter political standoffs that have made little progress on Iraq and on a host of domestic issues.     An AP-Ipsos poll also found that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is more popular than the president and her colleagues on Capitol Hill, though she faces a gender gap in which significantly more women than men support her.     The survey found just 35 percent approve of how Congress is handling its job, down five percentage points in a month. That gives lawmakers the same...

Republican presidential candidate John McCain said Thursday he believes President Bush's low approval ratings are hurting the GOP yet won't affect the party's 2008 nominee. "I don't think there's any doubt that when the president's polling numbers are low that it harms the Republican Party in general, but I think that when it comes election time that the overwhelming majority of Americans will choose their candidate on the basis of that individual candidate's qualifications, vision and record," McCain said in an interview with The Associated Press. The president's numbers have fallen largely because of his stewardship of the Iraq war....

The latest NEWSWEEK poll shows that 91 percent of American adults surveyed believe in God—and nearly half reject the theory of evolution. Also, Americans on John Edwards and the Senate's goal for troop withdrawal A belief in God and an identification with an organized religion are widespread throughout the country, according to the latest NEWSWEEK poll. Nine in 10 (91 percent) of American adults say they believe in God and almost as many (87 percent) say they identify with a specific religion. Christians far outnumber members of any other faith in the country, with 82 percent of the poll’s respondents...

Tension between government by experts (intellectuals, bureaucrats, and independent legislators) and the voice of the people (expressed in elections and opinion polls) complicates politics in our Federal republic. Relying too heavily on opinion polls or elections is a short road to disaster when the government must determine critical policies that involve intricate financial knowledge, broad knowledge of history, economics, and foreign affairs. The general populace can be too easily misled by propaganda and ignorance of the subject. But looking exclusively to an expert elite opens the path to tyranny, as the history of socialist collectivism demonstrates. Intellectual cadres, working through...

'Listen more' is world's message to US A BBC international opinion poll suggests there is widespread disquiet about the United States' role in Iraq and its other foreign policy priorities. The BBC's Jonathan Marcus analyses the results. The Bush administration's toppling of Saddam Hussein has had several profound and unintended consequences. One has been the way in which the destruction of both the Taleban regime in Afghanistan, and of Iraq's military machine, have opened the way for the rise of Iran as a major regional player. Another crucial but less tangible problem - as this opinion poll commissioned by the...

When the issue of having the federal government negotiate drug prices directly with pharmaceutical companies for the Medicare Part D program comes up later this week in Congress, it will be another example of an idea that seems to poll well and appears to enjoy a great deal of public support. However an in depth look at public opinion shows that once the American people understand the possible implications of negotiating the cost of prescription drug prices, public opinion changes significantly and voters become very skeptical of the idea and the implications for public health. Penn, Schoen, and Berland, a...

Nancy Pelosi makes me cringe. Is something wrong with her, or me? Pelosi, our first female speaker of the House, grandmother, mother of five (four in five years), has been all over TV this weekend with that wide-eyed, runaway bride thing going. She’s wearing her bright red pantsuit (an Armani, you think?). She’s smiling too wide, ear to ear, like it was just fantastic to get her head handed to her in her very first act as a supposed bipartisan, squeaky clean speaker: trying to settle an old vendetta by foisting on America as majority leader John Murtha - the...

They like us. They really like us. Of course, not all of them are the smartest pigs in the pipeline. Our valentine from the Lower 48 -- 152 pages of survey results from a poll conducted last spring -- indicates that Outsiders think mostly good thoughts when they think about Alaska. It also indicates they're confused on certain aspects of life in the 49th state. When asked to play a word-association game, a handful of the 1,500 respondents said the first thing that comes to mind when they hear "Alaska'' is "50th state.'' Sorry, Hawaii. Guess that makes you a...

    The national media is a power-hungry institution. It maintains its power to determine what is important in American politics and government by making dupes of the American public. The "duping" occurs though media opinion polling.     To preserve their agenda power, the mainstream media have an ace in the hole: opinion polls. By asking the right questions of the public, the media can validate the legitimacy of their agenda focus by claiming the public has a similar view.     What is the mainstream media's favored agenda focus? They have long devoted disproportionate interest to political conflict, scandal, horse races and bad news....

WASHINGTON, June 13 — As the war in Iraq continues for a fourth year, the global image of America has slipped further, even among people in some countries closely allied with the United States, a new opinion poll has found. Favorable views of the United States dropped sharply over the past year in Spain, where only 23 percent said they had a positive opinion, down from 41 percent last year, according to the survey. It was done in 15 nations, including the United States, this spring by the Washington-based Pew Research Center. Other countries where positive views dropped significantly include...

Forty-two percent (42%) of Americans approve of the way that George W. Bush is performing his role as President. Fifty-seven percent (57%) disapprove. Those figures include 20% of Americans who Strongly Approve and 40% who Strongly Disapprove. Overall, the President earns Approval from 46% of men and 39% of women. . . . . . . The President did not receive a bounce from the news of al-Zarqawi’s death. Rasmussen Reports tracking data shows that 41% of Americans now believe the U.S. and its allies are winning the War on Terror while 30% believe the terrorists are winning. The survey...

The Committee of 100 survey that I have mentioned here in the past asked the question of the American general public and American opinion leaders - Should the US take a more active role in Cross Strait relations? Interestingly enough, the American general public and the American Opinion Leaders were about equal, with 44% saying the US should be more active. Just over half (52%) of the opinion leaders said, "no!", and just under half (47%) of the general public said, "no!" The majority opinion is for the US to mind its own business. One in ten persons in the...

The Committee of 100 survey that I have mentioned here in the past asked the question of American opinion leaders - Americans were asked - What are the most admirable traits of the Chinese and their culture? 9. One in 25 people said the Chinese are friendly - 4% (uh, perhaps they should smile more?) 8. Intelligent - 7%. This one surprised me. Most of my Chinese friends are ten times smarter than I. 7. Disciplined - 8% When it's time, it's time. 6. The Food! - 9% - Nearly one in ten Americans think the Chinese have the market...

The Committee of 100 survey that I have mentioned here in the past asked the question of the American general public and American opinion leaders - Is Hong Kong better or worse since the 1997 handover? About one in five of the general public think it is better (I wonder how many of them have been there....) whereas one in six of the opinion leaders thought Hong Kong was better off. However....one in three of the general public thought that Hong Kong was worse off now and nearly half of all opinion leaders (46%) thought Hong Kong has gone downhill....

There is no denying the fact that America is politically divided today. Some say we are more divided than ever in history, though we have not yet reached a second civil war level of division. Most believe we are divided right down the middle, based upon recent election cycle returns in which only a couple percentage points separate the victor from the loser. Most blame polarizing politicians or extreme rhetoric for our divide, but only that extreme rhetoric or polarizing political figure from across the aisle. For the most part, we are divided between America’s political left and right. Though...

Survey: Russians consider the Kremlin's stance on HAMAS to be unconstructive The majority of those polled by the radio station of "Echo of Moscow" view unfavorably Russia's support of the Palestinian government, which consists of Hamas member. "Echo of Moscow" conducted flash poll of its listeners during its "Richochet" program. Sixty-five percent of respondents believe Russia's position on Hamas is unconstructive. Thirty-five percent support the Kremlin's postion. The survey took 5 minutes to conduct and received 2542 responses (telephone calls). The survey was conducted 24 hours after President Putin's press conference at which he stated that Russia never recognized Hamas...

If the 2008 presidential election were held today, Republican Rudy Giuliani would beat Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton according to a nationwide poll conducted by Canisius College. Of the 455 respondents who volunteered an answer regarding the 2008 match-up, Giuliani received 54 percent of the vote to Clinton’s 38 percent. Michael V. Haselswerdt, PhD, professor of political science at Canisius and co-director of the poll, notes “Clinton loses among voters in the red states, which is no surprise, but Giuliani breaks even in the blue states.” The Canisius poll also shows that only 27 percent of Americans think the nation is...

Have you ever read poll results and wished they'd put the question differently? Or offered different answers? Or asked an entirely different question? Well, now you can do something about it. Newswise — Future Brief, a free Internet publication designed to keep the public abreast of trends in society, science, and security, is offering the public the opportunity to create their own poll questions. Those selected will be put to the American people in professional polls implemented by Zogby International, one of America's leading opinion research organizations. Zogby will take polls on each question in the same manner as it...

KEHL AM RHEIN, Germany -- For the first time since German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder announced early elections in May, the Christian Democrats/Christian Socialists and coalition partner Free Democrats have lost their majority in the polls. If elections were held Sunday, the Social Democrats, Greens, and the Leftist Union would get as many votes as the opposition, a new poll has found.

The old media is on the ropes. Newspaper circulations are at an all time low and still slipping. Network news is having trouble competing with PBS for ratings, having lost many of their viewers to cable news, notably - the much hated and loved Fox. Once respected news journals like Time and Newsweek now share rack space with other sensationalized headline merchants like The Globe and The Enquirer, which sell better because their headlines are more reliable. Even the household term old media itself describes the fading glory of a once mainstream news establishment turned tabloid rag, now permanently engaged...

"The Chinese Communist Party survived a brutal civil war with the Nationalists, battles with American forces in Korea and massive pro-democracy demonstrations at Tiananmen Square. But now it may finally have met its match - the Internet. The collision between the Internet and Chinese authorities is one of the grand wrestling matches of history, visible in part at http://www.yuluncn.com. That's the Web site of a self-appointed journalist named Li Xinde. He made a modest fortune selling Chinese medicine around the country, and now he's started the Chinese Public Opinion Surveillance Net - one of four million blogs in China. Mr....

BEIJING – China has formed a special force of undercover online commentators to try to sway public opinion on controversial issues on the Internet, a newspaper said on Thursday. A special force of online commentators had already been operating in Suqian city in the eastern coastal province of Jiangsu since April, the Southern Weekend said. Their job was to defend the government when negative comments appeared on Internet bulletin boards and chatrooms, the weekly quoted local officials as saying. Suqian city's propaganda department recruited the commentators from among government officials, the weekly said, adding that they must 'understand (government) policies,...

SO many Americans apparently now see journalists as self-interested, careerist and unprofessional that perhaps it would make sense for media executives to call up another group of bosses who once faced fundamental questions about their product: the makers of Tylenol in the 1980's. After all, Johnson & Johnson proved that credibility, not to mention market share, could be regained after scandal - in its case, a series of deaths caused by cyanide-laced capsules some 20 years ago. Part of the strategy was to portray the company as a victim in its own right. "We expressed genuine regret and took the...

SYDNEY, March 28 - As the point person in the Bush administration's campaign to improve America's image in the world, Karen Hughes may face a more difficult challenge than she imagined and discover that she will have to travel far beyond the Middle East. A poll released Monday in Australia, long known for friendly relations with Americans, found that only 58 percent of the population had a positive view of the United States. That put the United States behind China (69 percent positive), and not even in the overall Top 10 countries, regions or groups that Australians respect. They have...

MOSCOW, March 28 (RIA Novosti) - At the moment, 54% of Russians approve of the governor appointment system (by regional legislatures following the president's recommendations) proposed by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Thirty-nine percent disagree. In September 2004, after Putin put forward the initiative, 38% of respondents backed this proposal (partially or in full), and 48% disapproved of it. This is the information of the all-Russian Public Opinion Center, which conducted a representative survey of 1,600 Russian citizens in 100 cities and towns in 40 regions, territories and republics on March 13-14 and March 19-21. The statistic error does not exceed...

GUEST OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR A poorly devised exit poll question and a dose of spin are threatening to undermine our understanding of the 2004 presidential election. The news media has made much of the finding that a fifth of voters picked "moral values" as the most important issue in deciding their vote - as many as cited terrorism or the economy. The conclusion: moral values are ascendant as a political issue. The reporting accurately represents the exit poll data, but not reality. While morals and values are critical in informing political judgments, they represent personal characteristics far more than a discrete...

OP-ED COLUMNIST Every election year, we in the commentariat come up with a story line to explain the result, and the story line has to have two features. First, it has to be completely wrong. Second, it has to reassure liberals that they are morally superior to the people who just defeated them. In past years, the story line has involved Angry White Males, or Willie Horton-bashing racists. This year, the official story is that throngs of homophobic, Red America values-voters surged to the polls to put George Bush over the top. This theory certainly flatters liberals, and it is...

THE POLLING The new $10 million polling system used by many news organizations to predict the outcome of the presidential race had a number of problems that led to the early erroneous impression that John Kerry was heading for victory, according to a report prepared by the system's architects. The report, written by Joe Lenski and Warren Mitofsky and obtained by The New York Times, details systemic glitches that skewed the data in ways of which several news organizations, who paid tens of thousands of dollars for the service, were not aware. In some cases, the report said, survey takers...

Polling is “an Industrial Age strategy that hasn’t woken up to Information Age reality,” said John P. Avlon, author of “Independent Nation: How the Vital Center is Changing American Politics.” The big obstacle is cellular telephones, especially as they become so advanced that people abandon landline phones, Avlon said in an interview with MSNBC TV. “Pollsters use landline call sheets, the same way they’ve done for the past 20 years,” he said.

"The Truth About Iraq.org is doing important work in getting out the other side of the story in Iraq. Every American should visit this website before they vote." - Roger Hedgecock, host of the Roger Hedgecock Community Forum, on AM 600 KOGO in San Diego, #1 conservative talk show in Southern California Voters in key battleground states are making up their minds now! They must know the truth about Iraq before they decide. It is URGENT that you help us get the word out in these final days. Your financial contribution will go a long way to support our media...

LONDON, Oct. 15 — It is getting down to the wire and the rest of the world is still trying to elbow its way into the American presidential election. With the professed goal of showing how the United States "is perceived by the rest of the world," 10 leading newspapers around the globe today published the results of public opinion surveys in their countries, where residents in eight of them said they strongly favored Senator John Kerry in the race for the White House. The surveys also found that opinions of the United States had worsened during President Bush's tenure...

Here I am, typing on the laptop, music humming in the ears, surveying the news. I'll be leaving soon for an Anatomy class, so I need to come up with a provocative topic. But what is there to write about? I could write about the presidential race and the debate that, by the time you read this, will have already been over. The horse race between President Bush and Sen. Kerry has been boring to me since the beginning. I was at Barnes and Noble not too long ago and I saw the cover of the latest Reason magazine. The...

Senator John Kerry came out of the first presidential debate having reassured many Americans of his ability to handle an international crisis or a terrorist attack and with a generally more favorable image, but he failed to shake the perception that he panders to voters in search of support, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. The poll also found significant doubts about President Bush's policies toward Iraq, with a majority of the public saying that the United States invaded too soon and that the administration did a poor job thinking through the consequences of the war. But...

*** Change Public Opinion! Small actions now can make all the difference later... Elections and causes are often won by swaying the opinions of just a few previously undecided people. Together we can do this, but we need to start now... One quick and easy way is via the PublicOpinion.com website. If each of us leaves an opinion there that is POSITIVE (let's leave the negative campaigning to the other guys!) regarding our candidates, party, and causes, and encourages others of like mind to do the same, we could quickly generate a huge amount of positive opinions before the other...

No majority consensus on what should be done now in IraqPRINCETON, NJ -- An analysis of recent polling data shows that Americans remain divided on the issue of Iraq, and that so far, there is no clear indication of how the issue is going to affect the presidential election. Four basic conclusions can be drawn from the data: 1) President George W. Bush is vulnerable on the issue of Iraq; 2) Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry is no better positioned on Iraq than Bush; 3) the public is divided about whether going to war in Iraq in the first place...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 10 - A new survey suggests that the number of Medicare beneficiaries with negative views of the new prescription drug law far exceeds the number with positive views. But, it says, beneficiaries want Congress to fix what they see as problems in the law, not repeal it as many Democrats have advocated. The survey, released on Tuesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health, found that 47 percent of beneficiaries had unfavorable views of the law, while 26 percent had favorable views. The rest said they did not have enough information to offer...

Officials discuss how to delay Election Day Talks stem from recent fears of terror attack timed to vote Monday, July 12, 2004 Posted: 0242 GMT (1042 HKT) WASHINGTON (CNN) -- U.S. officials have discussed the idea of postponing Election Day in the event of a terrorist attack on or about that day, a Homeland Security Department spokesman said Sunday. The department has referred questions about the matter to the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel, said spokesman Brian Roehrkasse, confirming a report in this week's editions of Newsweek magazine. Newsweek said the discussions about whether the November 2 election...

A large majority of Iraqis believe life is better now than it was under Saddam Hussein, according to a new poll.... A total of 2,500 Iraqis were quizzed for a group of international broadcasting organisations including the BBC in a poll to mark the first anniversary of the outbreak of war.... Iraqi people appeared optimistic about the future, with 71% saying they expected things to be better in a year's time, 6% predicting it will be worse and 9% the same. Overall, 70% said that life was good now, compared with 29% who said it was bad.

During the first year of the United States occupation of Iraq, antagonism toward American foreign policy in some European and Muslim countries has hardened, with public opinion overseas swinging sharply in favor of charting a course independent of Washington, a new poll has found. The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press conducted the survey before the terrorist attack last week in Madrid and the subsequent revolt by Spanish voters against the political party that had embraced American policy toward Iraq. But the survey found that a majority of people interviewed in France and Germany, two other traditional...

Politicians from both parties think President Bush's immigration plan is unusually deft, mostly because nearly every constituency seems to get something. Big business is assured an unending supply of cheap labor. Unions get the bonanza of millions more workers to organize. Bush's credentials as a "compassionate conservative" are more plausible than ever, and Republican plans to put forward more Latino candidates for political office will now look much less cynical. Republicans are seen as reaching out, not just to Latinos but to moderate white voters Bush will need in the fall. These are people whose voting patterns reflect a feelings-based...

<p>President Bush begins the election year with the national mood improving, his support on key issues building and his Democratic opponents struggling to gain an edge, a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll shows.</p> <p>Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor who pulled away from the Democratic field in early December, has lost his lead over No. 2 Wesley Clark, the former NATO commander. Dean slipped from a 21-point gap to 4 points, effectively a tie within the margin of error.</p>