Many of the major pollsters and news organizations that conduct surveys have already begun testing the possible candidates for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination and matching them against President Barack Obama. It’s an exercise probably more useful in gauging what voters think of them today than how they might feel next year. That’s particularly true [...]
While voters appeared to send a clear message to the Democratic-controlled Congress on Election Day, new polls out this week find no apparent public consensus about how to deal with some of the key issues facing the country, and underscore the obstacles facing Congress as it tries to reduce the budget deficit.
On health care, 47 percent of registered voters in a Quinnipiac University poll said Congress should repeal the law that passed earlier this year. But about as many said the health care law should be left as is (18 percent) or expanded (30 percent).
Turning toward the debate about what to do with the Bush-era tax cuts, 43 percent of voters said they should be kept only for those earning less than $250,000 a year, while 35 percent said they should be continued for all households, and 14 percent said Congress should allow them to expire for everyone.
A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll also found the public split about the tax cuts. And in an ominous sign for Congress as it tries to tackle the deficit, the poll found 70 percent of Americans saying they were uncomfortable with the idea of spending cuts to programs like Medicare, Social Security and defense. Nearly 6 in 10 said they were uncomfortable with increasing tax revenues that would include a rise in the gasoline tax, limiting deductions on some home mortgages and making changes to corporate taxes. And 57 percent said they were uncomfortable with increasing the Social Security retirement age to 69 over the next 60 years.
At the same time, Americans are most apt to say that the highest priority for the next Congress should be spending to create jobs. In the Quinnipiac poll, 45 percent said so, while 32 percent said the highest priority should be reducing the deficit and 17 percent said it should be cutting taxes.
The polls also send a message to Republicans that, the election results notwithstanding, they still have a lot of work to do to gain favor among the public. Just 27 percent of voters in the Quinnipiac poll said they approved of the way Republicans in Congress were handling their job. And just 34 percent of Americans in the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll said they had positive feelings toward the Republican Party.
Those results echoed the Election Day exit-poll results, in which a majority of voters said they had an unfavorable view of the Republican Party, and about as many as had an unfavorable view of the Democratic Party.
The Quinnipiac University poll was conducted by telephone Nov. 8-15 among 2,424 registered voters nationwide and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. The NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll was conducted by telephone Nov. 11-15 among 1,000 adults nationwide and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
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