What They Told Us: Reviewing Last Week’s Key Polls
Saturday, September 05, 2009 Email to a Friend ShareThis.Advertisement

For most Americans, Labor Day weekend marks the end of summer. But this year it also means the return of Congress to Washington, D.C., after one of the most harrowing recesses even the most senior of the legislators can ever recall.

A lot of voters are in a bad mood over the health care reform plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats, and they’ve been letting their elected officials know about it. Not that voters have a great deal of confidence in those officials.

Forty-two percent (42%) of voters, in fact, say a group of people randomly selected from the phone book would do a better job than the current Congress. The identical number (42%) disagree, but 16% are not sure.

If they were given a vote to keep or replace the entire Congress, just 25% of voters nationwide would keep the current batch of legislators. Fifty-seven percent (57%) would vote to replace the entire Congress and start all over again.

Some in Congress have expressed frustration about the angry outbursts at town hall meetings on the health care issue, but most voters (56%) say that it’s more important for the legislators to hear the views of their constituents than to explain the proposed legislation. The desire for Congress to listen may stem from the fact that many voters believe they understand the legislation better than Congress.

Two-out-of-three voters (67%) also lack confidence that Congress knows what it’s doing when it comes to the economy.

Fifty-one percent (51%) of voters think the Congress is too liberal anyway while 22% say it is too conservative. Just 14% say the ideological balance of Congress is about right.

Most Republican voters (55%) say that the average Republican in Congress is more liberal than they are. Not surprisingly then, 74% of GOP voters say their party’s representatives in Congress have lost touch with Republicans nationwide over the past several years. Republican voters also believe overwhelmingly that it is more important for the party to stand for what it believes in rather than to try to work with the president.

Democratic voters, on the other hand, seem more comfortable with their legislators. Just 27% of Democratic voters say the average Democratic member of Congress is more liberal than they are. A solid plurality of 47% say that voters and congressman in the president’s party are about the same ideologically.

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As for the health care reform legislation that will be Congress’ first order of business when it returns on Tuesday, 68% of voters say its passage is likely to create larger deficits. Yet of the priorities outlined by the president earlier this year, voters have consistently ranked deficit reduction as number one ahead of health care reform. The president will launch his renewed offensive for the health reform bill in a major speech on Wednesday. Rasmussen Reports will release new polling data on the health care topic in advance of that speech.

The Senate also will be tackling the historic climate change bill aimed at curbing global warming. Public opinion about the bill, which opponents claim will have a major negative impact on the economy, is largely unchanged since the House passed it at the end of June. Thirty-five percent (35%) of Americans favor the bill, while 40% are opposed to it. However, the antis feel more strongly: Twenty-six percent (26%) Strongly Oppose the bill versus 10% who Strongly Favor it.

For the 10th straight week, Republicans hold the edge over Democrats in the Generic Congressional Ballot. Forty-three percent (43%) now would vote for their district’s Republican congressional candidate while 36% would opt for his or her Democratic opponent. That’s the lowest level of support for Democrats in recent years, while Republicans have tied their highest level of support for the third straight week.

Congressional Democrats aren’t helped right now by Obama’s continuing low approval ratings as measured by the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll.
When tracking the president’s job approval on a daily basis, it’s easy to get so caught up in the day-to-day fluctuations and miss the bigger picture. To look at the longer-term trends, Rasmussen Reports has compiled the numbers on a full-month basis.

The president’s ratings aren’t helped by the finding that more voters than ever (47%) think their personal taxes will rise under Obama. Sixty percent (60%) of voters believe tax increases hurt the economy, the highest total measured in over a year but a fairly consistent view for over a decade.

Adding to the president’s concerns is the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan. Fifty-five percent (55%) of voters now expect the war there to get worse during the next six months. Twenty percent (20%) say all U.S. troops should be brought home from Afghanistan immediately. Another 17% oppose an immediate withdrawal but believe a firm timetable should be established to bring all troops home within a year.

Unhappiness with the president isn’t just a Republican thing either. Leading liberals in his own party are already thinking the unthinkable: Challenging Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2012. Recent survey numbers show that voters are closely divided over whether Hillary Clinton will give the president a run for it.

But the good news for the president and his party is that the congressional elections are well over a year away, and there are some glimmers of hope in the latest surveys.

Despite their reservations about the government bailout of the financial industry, Americans are clearly less worried about their own money in the bank. Only 25% are even somewhat worried that their money will be lost due to a bank failure, down 14 points from February.

Economic confidence among small business owners in August jumped to its highest level in 18 months in the latest Discover (R) Small Business Watch (SM). More owners expressed faith that the economy is on the rise and gave signs that they are more willing to invest in advertising and new inventory.

The Rasmussen Employment Index, which measures worker confidence, recovered somewhat after a major drop in July and remains slightly ahead of where it was at the first of the year.

The Discover Consumer Spending Monitor, which tracks consumer confidence, hit its highest point in a year. Perhaps most significantly the portion of the survey that measures consumer confidence in the overall economy rose to its highest level since October 2007.

The Rasmussen Consumer Index ended the week with consumer confidence up 16 points from the first of the year, while investor confidence as measured by the Rasmussen Investor Index is now up 22 points from the beginning of 2009.

On the national security front, as the eighth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks nears, 49% of Americans believe it is at least somewhat likely that there will be a significant terrorist attack in the United States in the next year. But that figure is down from 70% in the summer of 2007 and 58% in December 2008.

In other polls last week:

-- In one of the year’s two marquee political races, Republican Robert F. McDonnell retains a steady lead – 51% to 42% - over Democrat R. Creigh Deeds in the contest for Virginia governor. McDonnell leading Deeds 51% to 42%. That’s little changed from a month ago. Rasmussen Reports will release new numbers on the New Jersey governor’s race this coming week.

-- Sixty-one percent (61%) of Americans say President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963, had the most positive and lasting impact on the nation of all of the political Kennedy brothers. Twenty percent (20%) say the same of Senator Edward M. "Ted" Kennedy, who died August 25.

-- For the third 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 up 24 points compared to late September and early October of last year. Most voters (61%) continue to believe the nation is heading down the wrong track

-- While August was seen as a bad month politically for the president and his party, the number of Americans identifying themselves as Democrats inched up by half a percentage point during that time. But that wasn’t enough to make up for the two-percentage-point decline in July. The number of Republicans slipped by just over half a percentage point in August while the number of unaffiliateds increased fractionally.

-- Americans are now evenly divided over which is more important – developing new clean sources of energy or keeping the cost of existing energy sources down. This marks a shift away from keeping costs down, a reflection perhaps of the continuing low prices as the gasoline pump.

-- Say what? In the course of just over one month, baseball fans have shifted their prediction for this year’s World Series Championship team from the Boston Red Sox to their archrivals, the New York Yankees.

-- The return of Tom Brady has football fans believing that the New England Patriots can regain their Super Bowl form this year. The Patriots and the Pittsburgh Steelers are the fans’ top choices to win pro football’s championship game.

-- Fifty-eight percent (58%) of American adults who took a vacation this summer said economic conditions caused them to cut back on how much they spent. Thirty-nine percent (39%) did not cut back on their vacation spending due to the poor economy.

Check for the latest, regularly updated 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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Congress is coming back, and there are a number of big-ticket items on the table. Just remember, if it’s in the news, it’s in our polls