Poll
Here is a poll recently conducted (Dec. 7th-11th) of 1005 adults. Remember we talked about polls and how if you sample about 1000 random people you can get a pretty accurate picture of America (+/- 3% usually). Your task is to skim the questions and the responses and offer up some sort of intellectual response or pose some deep-thinking question based on the results. Be careful not to sound too much like someone who has already blogged. There is so much good "stuff" in this poll that we have studied in gov't. I couldn't resist posting for you. For those of you starting to look at the 2008 presidential election, there is info here you will really be interested in even though we are 2 years out.
You have until midnight next Thursday (Dec. 21st) to complete this for 5 points.
Here is the poll.
Poll
Mr. Thompson
posted by erdecker @ 1:39 PM
14 comments
14 Comments:
Hmm...Interesting. It's obvious what events coincided with Bush's approval ratings. I found the polls conducted just after Sept. 11 to be the most telling. Gee, how much has changed since then...
It also seems that Americans are pretty satisfied with the Nov. election results (questions 6 & 7). The Democrats who will control congress come January are apparently more trusted than Bush. The big question is will this change over the next two years, and what will that mean for the 2008 presidential election?
There's more I'd love to add my 2 cents (or more) on, but I'll let others comment. :)
These numbers bode well for a Hillary candidacy. While Giuliani and McCain battle it out for the Repulican candidacy, Clinton is by far the front runner for the Dems. 39% of Democrats consider her their 1st choice, 22% their 2nd choice. Obama, currently running in 2nd, doesn't even come close! Clinton's approval rating is at 56%, what I believe is an all-time high. McCain's currently sits at 50%.
But most importantly, what would help Hillary more than anything are SINGLE WOMEN. As Dick Morris noted, if the ratio of single women who vote in 2008 is on par with the rest of the country (which is expected seeing it could be a woman candidate...Hillary Clinton at that), the amount of them who vote could increase from 27 mil. in 2004 to 33 mil. in 2008. And seeing they generally vote Democratic 2 to 1, this could likely tip the presidency to Clinton. Could men, many of whom do not support Clinton, counter-act that? Probably not, because women out-vote men 55% to 45%, and women's share of the vote will most likely increase if a woman is on the ticket. Also, the Washington-Post/ABC poll shows that respondents were more likely to vote for a candidate if they were a woman (17%) than less likey if the candidate was a woman (14%). This shows that America may actually want a woman president.
What everything comes down to is the Guiliani factor. He has the highest approval rating of everyone in the poll...67%, which is phenomenal. However, he supports gun control, gay marriage, AND abortion rights. It is my opinion he could NEVER get through the Republican primaries/caucuses with such liberal stances on social issies, seeing those that vote in primaries and caucuses are more conversative than the general public. However, if he suprises everyone and becomes the candidate, I believe that is the end for Clinton. And Democrats should be kicking themselves for not picking someone like Obama, who arguably has the likeability and appeal of Guiliani, and the best shot of going toe-to-toe with him.
It's sad to see that 61% think the Iraq war was not worth fighting, yet a clear majority believe neither President Bush nor the Democrats have a clear plan for handling the situation. Where does that leave us? It was also interesting to see that 48% think we should keep troops in Iraq and 48% think we should withdraw troops. It appears the American public isn't sure what to do either. I'm sure that's comforting to an Iraqi...
Personally, I find this greatly amusing, and very reflective of previous polls that said that voters' main goal in the 2006 Congressional election was to hurt Bush. In number 6a the poll showed that 56% trust the Democrats in Senate to do a better job with the situation in Iraq than Bush. But when you look at numbers 17 and 18, you see that 72% say Bush does not have a clear plan for Iraq, and also that 65% say that the Democrats in Congress have no clear plan. Why do you trust the Democrats in Congress over Bush when the majority says that neither one has a clear plan? That makes a whole lot of sense to me....NOT. I have found many of these inconsistencies throughout the polling, but I will leave these for others to find.
Aaron
I found it interesting that while America has no real idea about what they want done in Irag, it still had 44% of the vote for the most important issue for Congress and Bush to deal with. It is also interesting that the percent of people who thought that the economy was the most important issue went from 15% to 10% over this last year. Right now America seems to indecisive and moderate for it's own good. It is obvious that the genral public is not very concerned with the nation's growing debt.
I found the questions regarding invasion of privacy (38-40) very interesting: as of the last poll date, 66% think that the government is violating individual's privacy rights, 51% feel the intusions are justified, and 63% feel that investigating terrorist threats is more important than respecting privacy rights of individuals. I was suprised to see that most people believe the invasion of privacy is necessary and acceptable; to me this says that people are willing to let fear dictate their lives. This is especially evident when one looks at older dates, when 9/11 was still fresh in the minds of Americans; in 2002 79% of people felt that investigating terrorist threats was more important, a number which has steadily declined to this point. I can't believe that when the majority of people believe individual privacy is being intuded upon, they are so willing to accept it, especially when the majority feel that Bush is not handling the US campaign against terrorism well.
I found question number 7 quite telling, when people always are looking for change in congress. Maybe its time for us to start voting for independant parties, in an attempt to throw our full force against the machine.
Andrew
Personally, I loved question three. It is distressing but reflective that almost never in that long span of time has the american public been even above 50% in their approval of how congress does its job. Eight was a relief that still half the people polled believe in compromise, while I would like to know what the differences of opinion were specifically for the overall state of the economy (question 35). I would love to see where the polled place their values for economic strength, seeing as the poll is split 50/50.
In that entire questionaire, I find it interesting that the issue of global warming is found only once - in question 4 where it is marked as the least important important issue President Bush and Congress should deal with next year. Although its low rank is not at terribly surprising,(Iraq and domestic issues receive far more attention than global warming ever has - especially in a country that didn't ratify the Kyoto Protocol) it is surprising when taken in context. 2006 was the year former Vice President Al Gore received national and international attention for his documentary "An Inconvenient Truth." I expected global warming to be higher on the list of important matters to be dealt with in the upcoming year, especially with the way the media jumped at the opportunity to resurrect the Bush vs. Gore battle.
Only 1% of respondents felt global warming was an issue. I find this appalling, I wonder if this issue was even deemed important in previous polls. I wonder whether I should be grateful the issue is even on the list or disdained at its low placement.
-Eric
The piece of the poll that I found most interesting was the approval/disapproval of the ethics in government. The approval rating has gone down about 10% in the last year to 39%. What I wish we could see is the ratings for a Presidential election year. This approval drop is grouped with trends such as the situation in Iraq and US handling of Terrorism. Both topics dropped as well as our ethical approval and its easily arguable that the three go hand in hand. What I did notice was that the approval rating of our economy stayed relatively the same and even increased a little bit...I wonder if those go hand in hand as well which leads me to wonder if as our economy rises, will our morals get shoved under the rug?
I thought that the numbers for one of the later questions (don't remember the number off the top of my head)asking if certain qualities in a candidate would affect voters were interesting. Many people did not have an opinion if a presidential candidate was balck or female, but 33 said that if the candidate was mormon they would not vote fo him/her. I thought it was interesting that religion had more sway for most voters than race or gender.
After analyzing the data from the given survey, I found a lot of the information extremely paradoxical. As has been mentioned a couple times before, Americans seem to be speaking out of both sides of their mouths. They have strong opinions on the war in Iraq, yet no one is offering a plan and few believe our government has a plan to pull out. Similarly, Americans criticize Bush every day about how he's doing his job, yet the uptake of power in Congress by the Democrats seems to have restored very little faith in the American people. Reading the survey was interesting, but it makes me kind of depressed. It clearly showed me that Americans have little faith in their government (with approval ratings for the president in the tubes and approval for congress barely creeping up to 55%). It makes me wonder if the American people have any sort of hope for a positive future, and it makes me wonder how Americans keep it together enough to take pride in their government system at all.
*courtney
11:10 and counting: I am cutting it a little close.
I thought it was interesting how both sides agree that they cannot simply carry out their agenda, but the two parties have to work together and form compromise- they reword it a couple of times. 58% said that deomocrats should work with bush, and 62% said republicans should work with democrats. Whatever way you look at it citizens agree that compromise is in order, and that neither side is ultimately right. Do you think the officals are going to be wise enough to take their consitutuents advice?? Change WILL NOT occur unless they can compromise, and the public is demanding change.
Sorry this is being posted Friday Mr. T...I forgot. Anyways, I think it is interesting how so many people do not trust our government to be honest with us. #22 says that as of 12/11 they believed Bush intentionally misled the public. This basically means people don't trust our government to do what is right or what is best...but after doing that unit on spending I would have to say I don't think our government is very responsible or has much accountability...It makes sense that people feel like they have been misled after they feel like the war isn't "making significant process" (66%) (# 21) or that the "number of American casualties is unacceptable vs. the outcome of the war" (77%) (#14)
--Katrina
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