Most Americans are still highly pessimistic about the direction in which moral values in the United States are headed. Seventy-two percent say moral values in the country as a whole are getting worse, essentially unchanged from 73% last year, but improved from more than 80% in 2006 through 2008. Twenty [...] Read more »
Why Rational People Buy Into Conspiracy Theories
… As Richard Hofstadter wrote in his seminal 1965 book, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” conspiracy theories, especially those involving meddlesome foreigners, are a favorite pastime in this nation. Americans have always had the sneaking suspicion that somebody was out to get us — be it Freemasons, Catholics or [...] Read more »
GOP needs to reframe IRS scandal
The Internal Revenue Service scandal needs reframing pronto for Republicans to realize any political gains from it. The current framing is the same tired old “Republican suits versus Democrat suits in Congress” — the one that almost no one in the rest of America is interested in anymore. … The [...] Read more »
Nonscandals are having no effect
… GOP comparisons to Watergate reflect either poor historiography or political hackery — or both. Part of what made Watergate such a horrific scandal was the answer to Republican Senate Leader Howard Baker’s (R-Tenn.) famous questions, “What did the President know, and when did he know it?” It turned out [...] Read more »
Fox News poll: Obama ratings dip, voters say government ‘out of control’
After a week of revelations about government spying on reporters and the Internal Revenue Service targeting conservatives, most voters feel “like the federal government has gotten out of control and is threatening the basic civil liberties of Americans.” At the same time, a new Fox News poll finds disapproval of [...] Read more »
Hillary Clinton remains teflon despite Benghazi
Hillary Clinton continues to get heavily positive reviews for her work as secretary of state in a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, even after renewed Republican allegations of an Obama administration related to the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya, last fall. [cont.] Scott Clement, Washington Post Recent polls: Hillary [...] Read more »
Why Class Warfare is Working
… We recently conducted a survey in ten competitive congressional districts in California to gain better insight into Latino voting behavior and how Republicans might appeal to this growing sector of the electorate. The most important finding in this data – and in other data we have seen – is [...] Read more »
Blind Rage: Republicans’ Hatred of Obama Blinds Them to Public’s Lack of Interest in ‘Scandals’
… One wonders how long Republicans are going to bark up this tree, perhaps the wrong tree, while they ignore their own party’s problems, which were shown to be profound in the most recent elections. Clearly none of these recent issues has had a real impact on voters yet. … [...] Read more »
U.S. Economic Confidence Reaches Five-Year Weekly High
Americans were more confident in the economy last week than in any week since Gallup began tracking economic confidence daily in 2008. The Gallup Economic Confidence Index rose to -5 last week from -11 the prior week. The current score exceeds the previous weekly high of -8 reached two weeks [...] Read more »
Party opinion usurps public opinion
These days, more and more Americans are inclined to judge issues from a partisan viewpoint. In March, according to a Pew Research Center survey, twice as many Republicans (53 percent) as Democrats (27 percent) said the economy was poor. Yet, from everything we know, Republicans are not suffering more economic [...] Read more »