President Obama’s job approval numbers are even worse when you just look at the economy.

Do we have a new frontrunner in the race for the Republican nomination?

The first poll in the wake of Michele Bachmann’s victory at Ames and Rick Perry’s entry into the race shows a brand new frontrunner

It may only be a one-time fluke, or it could be the beginning of a trend. In either case, President Obama’s job approval number has fallen below 40% for the first time in his Presidency, according to the Gallup Daily Tracking Poll: President Obama’s summer woes have dragged his approval rating to an all-time low, [...]

State-level job approval numbers seem to suggest that the President could have Electoral College worries in 2012.

Non-rich people are in favor of taxing the rich and using the proceeds to fund programs for non-rich people

A new CNN/Opinion Research poll shows, not surprisingly, that Americans continue to become more pessimistic about the country’s economic future: Washington (CNN) – Americans have a bad case of the economic jitters, as recent drops in the stock market have been accompanied by a sharp rise in the public’s economic pessimism, according to a new [...]

David Weigel passes on this internal from the CBS/New York Times Poll: Bush has been out of office for nearly 31 months and yet more people still blame him for the state of the economy than they do the President of the United States. As Weigel says, there’s a reason why Democrats continue to bring [...]

In addition to the debt ceiling headaches, there’s news from Gallup that is likely not making President Obama happy today: President Obama’s job approval rating is at a new low, averaging 40% in July 26-28 Gallup Daily tracking. His prior low rating of 41% occurred several times, the last of which was in April. As [...]

If Mitt Romney looked in the rear view mirror he might just see Rick Perry gaining on him.

And no, that’s not a typo: Voter approval of the job Congress is doing has fallen to a new low – for the second month in a row. Just six percent (6%) of Likely U.S. Voters now rate Congress’ performance as good or excellent, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Last month, [...]

Are the new crop of GOP governors too conservative?

President Obama is polling at 46.8 percent, below the level needed to win re-election.

Signs, perhaps, that the public is coming to recognize that the debt kamikazes have no idea what they’re talking about: A majority of Americans say that Congress failing to raise the debt ceiling would be a real and serious problem, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. Fifty-five percent of all respondents — [...]

According to a new CBS News poll, the GOP seems to be losing the public relations war over the debt ceiling negotiations: Americans are unimpressed with their political leaders’ handling of the debt ceiling crisis, with a new CBS News poll showing a majority disapprove of all the involved parties’ conduct, but Republicans in Congress [...]

A majority of Americans want to ban smoking in public; a fifth want to ban it even in private.

If you look at the polls, the GOP has several things to be concerned about in the debate over the debt ceiling.

In May, President Obama was, somewhat ridiculously, accused of throwing Israel under the bus for making a reference to a negotiating position that had been a cornerstone of U.S. policy since at least the Clinton Administration. Since then, there’s been some speculation that Jewish American support for the President was in jeopardy because of his [...]

Another sign of economic pessimism from the latest CBS/New York Times Poll: Nearly 4 in 10 Americans say they think the economy is in permanent decline, a new polls shows as deep pessimism about the economy becomes more widespread. Thirty-nine percent of those surveyed for a New York Times/CBS News poll released late Wednesday say [...]

It got criticism from the right, but the American public seems pretty pleased with the President’s plan to start withdrawing troops from Afghanistan: An overwhelming majority of Americans support President Barack Obama’s plan to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, according to a new poll released Wednesday. In the Gallup survey, 72 percent of Americans say they [...]

A new Gallup poll discovers something rather obvious, but there’s still a lesson for the GOP.

Another indication that the public relations battle over Medicare is decidedly not going in the GOP’s favor: Representative Paul Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman who has become a star in the Republican Party with his plan to overhaul Medicare, is emerging as a polarizing figure among Americans. Twenty-six percent of people view the Wisconsin [...]

As the President prepares to announce his plans for the future in Afghanistan, a majority of Americans want the troops home now.

Democrats would like people to believe that supporting the Ryan Plan’s Medicare changes is so unpopular with the public that it will hurt the GOP at the polls, but that’s not necessarily the case: A Wall Street Journal/NBC poll asks Americans whether they would be more likely or less likely to vote for a candidate who [...]

President Obama comfortably leads all Republicans but one.

Via Gallup:  Gallup Daily: Obama Job Approval This is up from the May 28-31 number, which was 49%. It was last at 53% for the May 22-24 sample. The individual numbers can be downloaded in a spreadsheet here:  click.

Further evidence today that the GOP is losing the public relations war over the Ryan Plan and Medicare: A new national poll indicates that a majority of Americans don’t like what they’ve heard so far about congressional Republicans’ plans to change Medicare. According to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey, a majority also don’t think the [...]

A majority of Americans think homosexuals account for at least a fifth of the population.

Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani tops the latest CNN poll of Republican presidential contenders.

There have been no significant surveys of the Republican field taken since the announcement that frontrunners Mike Huckabee and Donald Trump and Establishment darling Mitch Daniels have dropped out of the race.

The bungled politics of the Ryan plan.

Via Politico:  Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin jump to top in new Gallup poll With Mike Huckabee’s exit from the race, Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin are now on top of the Republican field, according to a Gallup poll released Wednesday. Continue Reading Twenty percent of Republican and Republican-leaning voters say they’d support the former Massachusetts [...]

Via Rasmussen:  Daily Presidential Tracking Poll: Overall, 50% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the president’s performance. Forty-nine percent (49%) disapprove. Of course, if we look at Rasmussen’s “Presdential Approval Index” we see that Obama is at a -7: The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows that 27% of [...]

President Obama’s approval numbers shot up after Osama bin Laden was killed two weeks ago. They’ve already settled back to where they were

According to a new Washington Post/Pew poll, it doesn’t appear that President Obama is paying much of a political price for the recent up-tick in gas prices: Nine percent of Americans blame President Barack Obama and the U.S. government for this year’s spike in gasoline prices, according to a new Washington Post/Pew Research Center poll. [...]

The Pew Center is out with a new political typology.

The defense of torture as an extreme measure for extraordinary circumstances has evolved.tortu

President Obama’s decision to release his long-form birth certificate appears to have closed the case for all but the most paranoid Americans: The number of Americans saying President Obama was born in another country has been sliced in half, according to a new Washington Post poll. In interviews following the public release the president’s “long-form” [...]

There’s not much movement in the President’s job approval numbers.

Via the NYT:  For Obama, Big Rise in Poll Numbers After Bin Laden Raid In all, 57 percent said they now approved of the president’s job performance, up from 46 percent last month. Of course, this is hardly a surprise, and is likely ephemeral.  A comparative stat: The president’s job approval rating rose 11 points, [...]

The GOP seems to be losing the public relations battle over deficit reduction.

Americans are rallying around the President in the wake of the mission against bin Laden, but it’s likely to be short-lived.

Via Gallup:  In U.S., Negative Views of the Tea Party Rise to New High Really, this should hardly be a surprise.  The Tea Party is a faction of the Republican Party, which means that it already is unlikely to have much support in the Democratic Party (although the poll does show 10% Dem support) and [...]

There are signs that the Ryan Plan isn’t playing well with the public.

So, some bright people are surprised at new polling showing that a significant minority of Southerners have not enthusiastically embraced their ancestors’ loss in the Civil War.

Via Zogby:  Obama Job Approval at 41% Hits New Low for 2011 President Barack Obama’s job approval among likely voters dropped to 41% this week, his lowest so far this year and the lowest recorded in an IBOPE Zogby interactive poll since Nov. 22, 2010, when he received 39%. The percentage of voters who believe [...]

Just about one month in, the public still isn’t thrilled with the idea of U.S. involvement in Libya: Our most recent national poll found that only 27% of Americans supported the military intervention in Libya to 40% who were opposed and 33% who had no opinion. Democrats only narrowly stand behind the President in supporting [...]

The new CBS/NYT poll is out and the numbers are not exactly happy, no matter whom you support.

Our national cognitive dissonance continues… Via TMP:  Poll: 70% Of Tea Partiers Oppose Cuts To Medicare, Medicaid. In a McClatchy-Marist poll released this week, 70% of registered voters who identify with the Tea Party opposed making cuts to either Medicare or Medicaid — the government-run health programs for the elderly and the poor — to [...]

Another poll is out showing that there’s very little public support for any of the spending cuts or entitlement reforms that would have to make up any serious effort to bring Federal spending under control: Despite growing concerns about the country’s long-term fiscal problems and an intensifying debate in Washington about how to deal with [...]