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Americans distrusted US democracy long before Trump’s Russia problem

Historically, the high-water mark for American dissatisfaction with government was the 1970s — the era of Vietnam, Nixon and Watergate. AP Photo/John Duricka Ian Anson, University of Maryland, Baltimore County White House special counsel Robert Mueller recently issued 12 indictments alleging that Russian intelligence agents sought to tilt the vote […] Read more »

Obama Tops Public’s List of Best President in Their Lifetime, Followed by Clinton, Reagan

When asked which president has done the best job in their lifetimes, more Americans name Barack Obama than any other president. More than four-in-ten (44%) say Obama is the best or second best president of their lifetimes, compared with about a third who mention Bill Clinton (33%) or Ronald Reagan […] Read more »

Proud? Maybe Just Not Right Now

“America’s the best country in the world,” says Noam Chomsky. His writings are unfailingly critical of US government policy, so interviewers tend to ask him why he doesn’t go live somewhere else. That’s his answer. More and more Americans are coming to share that ambivalence. A Gallup poll released two […] Read more »

Singapore, Trump and Short Voter Memories

If talks in Singapore between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un conclude with anything short of a collapse, Trump will hail it as a great historical achievement. That’s fair enough, and he’d probably get a boost in the polls. Yet history shows that public-opinion gains for […] Read more »

It’s Trump’s economy now

At some point earlier this year, an important transition happened. Some time after Jan. 10 and before Feb. 7, two dates on which Quinnipiac University released national polling, the number of Americans saying that the state of the economy was due to Barack Obama dropped below the number saying it […] Read more »