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What They Told Us: Reviewing Last Week’s Key Polls
Saturday, July 09, 2011 

There was more bad news on the unemployment front Friday, and Americans continue to express little optimism that the elected officials they have now will be able to do anything about it. They also strongly question the national security direction the country has taken. 

Americans are less confident than ever that the nation’s policymakers know what they are doing when it comes to the economy. 

Last November, the Rasmussen Employment Index capped four months of improvement by reaching its highest level since February 2008.  It turned out to be the peak of the post-bailout era. Since then, the net hiring numbers have headed south. Just 20.3% of workers now say that their firms are hiring, while 23.4% report layoffs. 

Yet American workers are more confident that their next job will be better than their current one, although most aren’t looking for other work. 

The Rasmussen Consumer and Investor Indexes, which measure daily confidence among both groups, continued to stumble along this past week, with both still down from earlier in the year. 

While many policymakers worry that credit is too tight, most Americans think instead that people are borrowing more than they can afford.  Seventy-three percent (73%) of Adults feel that Americans borrowing too much money is a bigger problem for the economy than a lack of available credit. Just 19% believe banks should be encouraged in the current economic environment to lend money more freely. Seventy percent (70%) say banks should be encouraged instead to lend money only to those best able to repay the loans. 

Eighty-six percent (86%) of Americans think their fellow countrymen use their credit cards too much, but just 24% believe they personally have a borrowing problem. 

Voters remain strongly supportive of a free market economy over one controlled by the government and think small businesses are hurt more than big businesses when the government does get involved.  Fifty-six percent (56%) believe increased competition rather than increased government regulation is the best way to hold big business accountable. But 34% see increased regulation as the better course. 

Voters are more hopeful than ever that the lawmakers will finally repeal the national health care law, legislation that most have long believed will drive up both health care costs and the nation’s historic-level deficits.  A majority has favored repeal in surveys every week but one since the law’s passage in March of last year. 

For the second month in a row, slightly more voters describe the Republican agenda in Congress as extreme rather than mainstream.  But voters have consistently felt for more than two years that the agenda of congressional Democrats is even more extreme. 

Republicans continue to lead Democrats on the Generic Congressional Ballot as they have every week since June 2009.  But for the first time since March, more American adults consider themselves Democrats rather than Republicans. 

A closer look at voters’ foreign policy views suggests why most now want a firm timetable for full troop withdrawal from Afghanistan within a year and why most question continued U.S. military action in Libya. 

Compared to the four presidents who followed him, Ronald Reagan had a more limited view of when to send U.S. military force into action overseas, and voters still embrace the more restrained use of force that he advocated.  Seventy-five percent (75%) agree that “the United States should not commit its forces to military action overseas unless the cause is vital to our national interest.” That was the first point in “a set of principles to guide America in the application of military force” that Reagan recommended to future presidents in his autobiography. 

In June, the number who Strongly Approved of President Obama’s job performance as measured by the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll fell to 23%.  That matches the lowest total of his time in office, first reached two months ago. In May, the number who Strongly Approved bounced up two points following the killing of Osama bin Laden. This is just one of many measures showing that the president received a modest bounce following the bin Laden news and that the bounce has faded. 

Still, for the first time this year, the president and a generic Republican candidate are tied at 44% each in a hypothetical 2012 election matchup.  The GOP candidate had led the president for the previous five weeks. Rasmussen Reports will provide new data on this generic matchup each week until the field of prospective Republican nominees narrows to a few serious contenders. 

With the political season heating up, Rasmussen Reports decided to ask voters about some of the major national organizations that get roped into partisan debate whether they chose to or not. 

The National Education Association last week endorsed Obama’s reelection in 2012. Forty-two percent (42%) of voters hold at least a somewhat favorable opinion of the NEA, while 32% regard the nation’s largest teacher’s union at least somewhat unfavorably.  The National Rifle Association, on the other hand, is likely to endorse whomever Republicans choose as their presidential nominee in 2012. Fifty-four percent (54%) of voters view the gun rights group favorably, but 41% share an unfavorable opinion of the group. 

Forty-four percent (44%) of voters have a favorable opinion of the NAACP, the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization.  Forty-six percent (46%) offer an unfavorable opinion of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The American Civil Liberties Union, or ACLU, does not fare as well in the court of public opinion. The group that bills itself as the “nation’s guardian of liberty” is viewed favorably by 36% of voters and unfavorably by 52%.

AARP, formerly known as the American Association of Retired Persons, made news recently by shifting its position on Social Security benefit cuts, but public perceptions of the group are little changed from two years ago when it endorsed the national health care law.  Fifty-two percent (52%) of voters hold at least a somewhat favorable opinion of AARP, while 34% offer an unfavorable review. 

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