Rasmussen...
What They Told Us:
Reviewing Last Week’s Key Polls
Saturday, May 21, 2011
There was more muddle in the Middle East as the week came to a close.
President Obama made a major address on Thursday laying out U.S.
support for the popular protest movements in several Arab countries and
pushing a controversial solution to the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian
problem.
While the president didn’t stress this position in his remarks, U.S.
voters continue to believe strongly that a Middle East peace treaty
must include an acknowledgement by Palestinians of Israel’s right to
exist. But there’s very little voter confidence that there ever
will be peace between Israelis and Arabs.
Israel has been largely silent as the events of the so-called Arab
Spring have played out from Tunisia to Egypt to Libya to Syria and
elsewhere. Even before Obama’s speech which drew an angry, negative
response from Israel, however, most voters said the growing unrest in
the Arab world is putting the Jewish state further at risk both in the
long- and short-term.
The U.S. military remains a part of efforts to drive Libyan dictator
Moammar Gadhafi from power, but the Obama administration insists
American forces are now taking a backseat to those from NATO allies
like Great Britain and France. Voters aren’t so sure that this is the
case.
Still, most voters (63%) expect Gadhafi to be removed from power as a
result of the military action taken by the United States and other
countries, although there has been virtually no change in this
expectation since Osama bin Laden was killed.
As for bin Laden, 64% of voters think it’s at least somewhat likely
that enhanced interrogation techniques like waterboarding yielded
valuable intelligence information, but voters are closely divided over
whether that information was needed to find the mastermind of the 9/11
terrorist attacks.
Voter ratings for Obama’s handling of national security issues remain
among the highest of his presidency following the killing of bin Laden,
but the president’s grades on economic issues remain weak.
A majority (55%) of voters continue to support repeal of his top
legislative achievement, the national health care law, and 53% believe
it will increase the federal deficit.
The Rasmussen Consumer and Investor Indexes, which measure daily
confidence among both groups, were up slightly this past week but are
still little changed from three months ago.
Homeowners continue to be skeptical about the value of their home in
the short-term, and even long-term confidence is limited. Only
15% of Adult Homeowners believe the value of their house will go up
over the next year. Twenty-seven percent (27%) hold the opposite view
and believe it will go down. Those numbers reflect a further weakening
of confidence from a month ago and match the lowest level of optimism
yet recorded. Even looking out five years, just 43% believe the value
of their home will go up.
Only half (51%) of homeowners say their house is worth more than what
they still owe on their mortgage. That finding has ranged from a
low of 49% to a high of 61%, reached in October 2009 and December 2008.
While just over half (52%) of American adults still believe buying a
home is a family’s best investment, very few would recommend selling a
home in the current market.
A majority (54%) of voters continues to blame the nation’s economic
problems on the George W. Bush years, but 58% trust their own economic
judgment more than Obama’s.
Overall, at week’s end, 49% of voters say they at least somewhat
approve of the president’s performance, as measured by the Rasmussen
Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll. Fifty percent (50%)
disapprove.
Voters remain fairly evenly divided over whether they want to give the
president a second term in the White House. A Generic Republican
currently earns support from 45% of Likely Voters across the nation,
while the president attracts 43% of the vote. A week ago, the president
had an equally modest edge over the generic GOP candidate. 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.
The president leads seven long-shot Republican candidates in
hypothetical 2012 matchups. But in a result consistent with polls
involving the bigger GOP names, the president’s support stays in the
very narrow range of 42% to 49%. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie
runs strongest among the long-shot candidates, trailing the president
by eight points among Likely U.S. Voters, 43% to 35%. In that matchup,
25% of Republicans either prefer a third option or say they’re
undecided. Twenty-six percent (26%) of unaffiliated voters also fall
into that category.
Republicans hold a seven-point lead over Democrats on the latest
Generic Congressional Ballot. While that’s a marked improvement over
the findings in recent weeks, it’s consistent with results from earlier
in the year.
The bad news for Republicans is that voters now trust them on just six
out of 10 important voting issues regularly surveyed by Rasmussen
Reports. They trust Democrats more on the other four. In early
January, voters trusted the GOP more on all 10 issues.
Read the rest of the story with links at Rasmussen
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