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Rasmussen...
What They Told Us: Reviewing Last Week’s Key Polls
Saturday, February 05, 2011
   
The drama on the streets of Cairo has many Americans thinking about national security and the role our country plays in the world these days.

Most expect the unrest in Egypt to spread to other Middle Eastern countries and think that will be bad for the United States. But a sizable majority (70%) also believe the United States should stay out of Egypt’s current problems.

Voters give mixed marks to President Obama’s response to the crisis in Egypt, although the survey was taken prior to news reports that the White House is actively involved in efforts to change the government there. Getting the United Nations involved would just make things worse, however, as far as many are concerned.

Closer to home, 81% of voters think it is at least somewhat likely that the political crisis in Egypt will significantly increase the cost of gasoline, with 46% who say it is Very Likely.

While Egypt has been ruled without free elections for 30 years by President Hosni Mubarak, it also has been America’s – and Israel’s – strongest ally in the Middle East, and most Americans appear to recognize the need for a reality-based U.S. foreign policy. Sixty percent (60%) agree that it is more important for the United States to be allies with any country that best protects our own national security than it is to be allies only with countries that have freely elected governments.

Most voters (53%) believe America’s military strategy should focus on defending the United States and its interests, but a sizable number think the strategy should concentrate on keeping the world peaceful instead. Either way, voters overwhelmingly see economic challenges as a much bigger threat to the United States than challenges on the military front.

Voters are fairly evenly divided as to whether the federal government spends too much or too little on national defense, but most also appear to dramatically underestimate how much is actually spent. As discussion of cutting the defense budget grows in Congress, a plurality of voters think the United States should remove its troops from Western Europe and Japan, but most think we should keep our forces in South Korea.

Regardless of the cost estimates or where they’re stationed, the U.S. military is seen as the most powerful in the world by 65% of voters.

There’s little change in the number of voters who think the United States and its allies are winning the war on terror, but the number who feel the terrorists are winning has fallen to its lowest level in nearly two years.

For many Americans, the national color-coded terror alert system adopted after the 9/11 attacks had lost much of its original meaning, so it’s not surprising that 53% of voters agree with the Department of Homeland Security’s decision to abandon that system in favor of more specific warnings.

Speaking of the budget, few voters in today’s economic climate consider themselves liberals on fiscal policy issues, but there’s a little more divergence of opinion when it comes to social issues. Forty-seven percent (47%) of voters describe themselves as conservative on fiscal issues, while 42% say the same on social issues. Only seven percent (7%) describe themselves as liberal on fiscal policy issues, but nearly four times as many (26%) say they’re liberal when it comes to social issues.

Most voters (58%) continue to favor repeal of the national health care law, but now that the Republican-run House has voted to repeal and sent it on to the Democratic-controlled Senate, confidence that the law ultimately will be repealed has fallen to its lowest level in four months.

More than half the states are challenging the constitutionality of the health care law in court, many focusing on the requirement that every American must have health insurance. More voters than ever (58%) oppose that requirement and think states should have the right to opt out of some or all of the health care law.

Voters remain concerned, too, that the health care law will cause some employers to drop their health insurance coverage, and most still question the exemptions to the law the Obama administration is granting to some businesses.

But overall voters were a little happier last month with the job the president is doing. His job approval ratings as measured by the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll improved in January, with his monthly index at its highest level since April of last year.

The Rasmussen Consumer and Investor Indexes are up only slightly from the first of the year, but the Discover U.S. Spending Monitor jumped to a three-year high in January, fueled by a surge in the number of middle-income consumers who see improvement in the U.S. economy and in their personal finances.

Some of that money is likely to be bet this weekend by the 54% of Super Bowl watchers who say they’ll be focusing intently on the game. Forty percent (40%) admit they will mainly be socializing while the game is on, but then one-out-of-three Super Bowl viewers (35%) think the commercials are better than the action on the field anyway.

The big political game of the next 18 months – the battle for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012 – is in the very early stages and it’s hard to know who will emerge as serious candidates.

Most Republican Primary voters are looking for experience in both the private sector and government in a potential presidential candidate. Private sector experience carries a bit more weight. They are also overwhelmingly looking for someone who shares their views as opposed to someone who is merely electable.

Sarah Palin remains one of the most popular potential candidates, but a sizable number of primary voters hope she doesn’t get the nomination. However, nearly half of the likely primary voters who support Palin say they are at least somewhat likely to vote for a third-party candidate if she does not win the Republican nomination.

There’s more; read it at Rasmussen Reports


 
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