Sorry this is such a long post but I found these two polls chock full of interesting results. First, from the Wall St Journal (complete results):
After a fairly smooth opening, President Barack Obama faces new
concerns among the American public about the budget deficit and
government intervention in the economy as he works to enact ambitious
health and energy legislation, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll
finds.
These rising doubts threaten to overshadow the president's personal
popularity and his agenda, in what may be a new phase of the Obama
presidency.
"The public is really moving from evaluating him as a charismatic
and charming leader to his specific handling of the challenges facing
the country," says Peter D. Hart, a Democratic pollster who conducts
the survey with Republican Bill McInturff. Going forward, he says, Mr.
Obama and his allies "are going to have to navigate in pretty choppy
waters."
There's good news for the administration, too, including tentative
support for Mr. Obama's health-care plan and approval of his nominee
for the Supreme Court. The public seems more optimistic about the
country's economic future than it did a few weeks earlier, and
Americans are still more likely to blame the last administration for
the deficit.
But the poll suggests Mr. Obama faces challenges on multiple fronts,
including growing concerns about government spending and the bailout of
auto companies. A majority of people also disapprove of his decision to
close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Nearly seven in 10 survey respondents said they had concerns about
federal interventions into the economy, including Mr. Obama's decision
to take an ownership stake in General Motors Corp., limits on executive
compensation and the prospect of more government involvement in health
care. The negative feeling toward the GM rescue was reflected elsewhere
in the survey as well.
A solid majority -- 58% -- said that the president and Congress
should focus on keeping the budget deficit down, even if takes longer
for the economy to recover.
Laura Zamora, 40, of Orange, Calif., voted for Mr. Obama but says
she is frustrated by the economy and finds her support for the
president waning. She says she's facing a possible layoff as a local
government worker in California.
"He's bailing out the private sector. He's putting all kinds of
money into the private sector," says Mrs. Zamora. "The money should be
going to social programs, not to bailing out banks and GM. It should go
to people who are unemployed."
The survey of 1,008 adults, conducted Friday to Monday, had a margin
of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points for the full sample.
The results come after weeks of Republican hammering of Mr. Obama
for spending too much and taking on too many issues, arguments that
appear to be resonating with some voters.
Mr. Obama's overall job approval and personal ratings have slipped,
particularly among independent voters. His job approval rating now
stands at 56%, down from 61% in April. Among independents, it dropped
from nearly two-to-one approval to closely divided.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, President Obama ... ran down some of problems he said he had been forced to
deal with, and said the real argument is about whether to take on
health care and energy.
"I suppose we could just stand pat and not do anything on either of
those fronts...That's been tried for four or five decades. And in both
energy and health care, the problems have gotten worse, not better," he
said.
By some measures, the public seems to agree. Only 37% of people said
that Mr. Obama is taking on too many issues. A solid majority -- 60% --
said that he is focused on many issues because the country is facing so
many problems.
The president and his advisers appear to be aware of the peril they
face over the deficit. That helps explain why Mr. Obama has emphasized
his effort to cut health-care costs over his effort to expand
health-insurance coverage, and why he has promised that the cost of any
health-care package will be covered by spending cuts or tax increases.
When asked what the most important economic issue facing the country
is, 24% cited the deficit, vs. just 11% who named health care.
Mr. Obama has some breathing room. Nearly three in four respondents
said that the president inherited the current economic conditions,
versus just 14% who said he is responsible for them. Only 6% said the
Obama administration is most responsible for the budget deficit. Nearly
half blame the Bush administration.
On
the economy, the poll had some bright spots, with a rising expectation
of recovery. The portion of people who think the economy will improve
over the next 12 months rose to 46% from 38% in April. And 20%
predicted the recession would end in six months to a year, nearly
double the comparable figure from April.
Still, overall, the public finds the economy in dreadful shape
today, and people living in the Midwest were much less likely to
express optimism about the future than those on the coasts.
On health care, the public remains open to persuasion. Without being
told anything specific about the Obama plan in the survey, about a
third of people said it's a good idea, about a third said it's a bad
idea and the rest had no opinion. When given several details of his
approach, 55% said they favored it, versus 35% who were opposed.
There was also support for the Democratic push to let people sign up
for a public health-care plan that would compete with private
companies, one of the toughest issues in the health-care debate. Three
in four people said a public plan is extremely or quite important. But
when told the arguments for and against the plan, a smaller portion,
47%, agreed with arguments in support of the plan, with 42% agreeing
with the arguments against it.
At the same time, nearly half the participants said it was very or
somewhat likely that their employer would drop private coverage if a
public plan were available.
As for how to pay for the package, estimated at more than $1
trillion over 10 years, the public favors proposals to require all
Americans to get insurance, to raise taxes on the rich and, to a lesser
extent, to require all but the smallest businesses to offer insurance
or pay into a fund.
But majorities oppose plans to tax health benefits, even if the
taxes only apply to particularly generous plans. The public is divided
about cuts to Medicare.
Regarding Mr. Obama's pick to the Supreme Court, Judge Sonia
Sotomayor, half the public said she's qualified for the post, versus
just 13% who said she's not qualified. That's equivalent to numbers in
November 2005 for Samuel Alito, Mr. Bush's nominee who was subsequently
confirmed to the court.
One in three people said her decisions and views seem out of the
mainstream, vs. 28% who say they are in the mainstream. The rest had no
opinion. But overall support for her confirmation is strong.
There was some good news for General Motors, despite the widespread
antipathy to using taxpayer money to aid the company. More than half
the participants said they are considering or have recently considered
buying an American car. Of those people, 40% said the recent problems
of the U.S. auto industry make them more likely to buy American. Just
14% said it made them less likely.
A substantial majority of Americans say President Obama
has not developed a strategy to deal with the budget deficit, according
to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, which also found that
support for his plans to overhaul health care, rescue the auto industry
and close the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, falls well below his job
approval ratings.
A distinct gulf exists between Mr. Obama’s overall standing and how
some of his key initiatives are viewed, with fewer than half of
Americans saying they approve of how he has handled health care and the
effort to save General Motors and Chrysler.
A majority of people said his policies have had either no effect yet on
improving the economy or had made it worse, underscoring how his
political strength still rests on faith in his leadership rather than
concrete results.
As Mr. Obama finishes his fifth month in
office and assumes greater ownership of the problems he inherited,
Americans are alarmed by the hundreds of billions of dollars that have
been doled out to boost the economy. A majority said the government
should instead focus on reducing the federal deficit.
But with
a job approval rating of 63 percent, Mr. Obama has the backing of
Democrats and independents alike, a standing that many presidents would
envy and try to use to build support for their policies. His rating has
fallen to 23 percent among Republicans, from 44 percent in February, a
sign that bridging the partisan divide may remain an unaccomplished
goal.
The poll was conducted after Mr. Obama completed his fourth
international trip as president. He received high marks for his focus
abroad, with 59 percent of those polled saying they approve of his
approach to foreign policy. And after weeks of criticism from former
Vice President Dick Cheney and other Republicans, 57 percent say they approve of how Mr. Obama has dealt with the threat of terrorism.
The
White House is entering a critical summer with Mr. Obama pledging to
push his plans to revamp health care and financial regulation through
Congress and Senate hearings scheduled on his first nominee to the Supreme Court.
The poll suggested Americans remain patient, even as a strong majority
expressed concern that they or someone in their family could lose their
jobs in the next year.
“My feeling is that Obama is just
throwing money at things, but I don’t see anything being specifically
targeted,” Lynn Adams, 62, a Republican from Troy, Mich., said in a
follow-up interview. “But I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt
because he hasn’t been in office long enough” ...
The poll highlights the political and governing challenges on the horizon for Mr. Obama, including the towering federal budget
deficit, which is expected to push the national debt to levels that
many economists say could threaten the economy’s long-term vitality.
Six in 10 people surveyed said the administration has yet to develop a
clear plan for dealing with the deficit, including 65 percent of
independents.
Mr. Obama, in an interview on Tuesday with CNBC and
The New York Times, said the budget deficit was “something that keeps
me awake at night.”
While Republicans have steadily increased
their criticism of Mr. Obama, particularly on the budget deficit, the
poll found that the Republican Party
is viewed favorably by only 28 percent of those polled, the lowest
rating ever in a New York Times/CBS News poll. In contrast, 57 percent
said that they had a favorable view of the Democratic Party.
The
nomination of a Supreme Court justice, as well as the fatal shooting of
an abortion doctor in Kansas late last month, injected a fresh dynamic
into the national abortion debate. But the poll found essentially no
change in the public’s views of abortion in the last two decades, with
36 percent saying it should be generally available, 41 percent saying
it should be available but under stricter limits than are now in place
and 21 percent saying it should not be permitted ...
[Obama] faces a divided public as he works to carry out his executive order
to close the prison for terrorism suspects at Guantánamo Bay. The poll
found that 8 in 10 expressed worry that detainees released to other
countries might be involved in future attacks here.
Half of the
poll respondents said closing the prison would have no effect on
protecting the nation from terror threats, but 3 in 10 said they
thought it would make the United States less safe. Many of the
detainees being held at the prison have not been charged, and nearly 7
in 10 people surveyed said they would support charging them or
releasing them back to the country of their capture. Just 24 percent
said the detainees should continue to be held without charge for as
long as the government deems necessary.
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