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Gallup Poll Tag

Posted by Amy Miller on November 03, 2014 9 Comments
Gallup's latest gun rights-themed poll shows that by and large, Americans haven't been swayed by high-profile shootings into ceding their Second Amendment rights. In the wake of the 2012 shootings at Newtown, 58% of Americans polled said they favored stricter laws governing gun ownership; since then, however, that number has dropped to 47%. Via Gallup:
The percentage favoring stricter gun sale laws in the two years since Newtown occurred has declined despite steady and tragic high-profile shootings in the U.S at schools, malls and businesses. This past week, shootings occurred at a Seattle-area school and of police officers in Sacramento and Placer County, California. Amidst events like these in 2014, and the resulting calls for stricter gun sale laws, the 47% who favor stricter laws is just above the historical low of 43% measured in 2011. Ten years ago, three in five Americans (60%) said they favored stricter laws regulating the sale of firearms, but support fell to 44% in 2009 and remained at that level in polls conducted in the next two years. Days after the Newtown shooting, support for stricter gun sale laws swelled. Since 2012, however, Americans have retreated from those stronger attitudes about the need for more gun control, and the percentage of Americans who say the laws should be less strict -- although still low -- has edged up.
Numbers reflecting the percentage of Americans who favor a law banning the private ownership of handguns is also low, with only around 26% supporting a ban: 9byfbvyise22kwqz5zbcaq

Posted by Amy Miller on October 27, 2014 7 Comments
Candidates have been criss-crossing their respective districts for well over a year now, laying out their platforms and making promises about how they'll bring change to the offices they hope to hold. But judging by Gallup's latest poll, Americans aren't necessarily buying what their potential representatives are selling. With just days to go before the election, the Congressional approval rating is still hovering just above its all-time low. Via Gallup:
Congressional job approval in October matches the 14% average found so far in 2014. The current approval figure is the lowest found in October of a midterm election year since Gallup began tracking this measure in 1974. Gallup has found that low congressional approval ratings before midterm elections are linked to higher seat turnover, especially for members of the president's party. For example, congressional job approval in October was 21% in 2010, and 23% in 1994, two years when the president's party lost a large number of seats.

Posted by Amy Miller on October 14, 2014 5 Comments
Any reasonable person keeping up with the news cycle knows that Democratic leadership doesn't inspire much confidence in the American people. Legislation dies in the Senate at the hands of a petulant majority leader; both the IRS and the DOJ have come under fire for targeting Americans based on political affiliation; our President golfs while the Middle East burns. In fact, one might say the only thing Democrats are really good at is riling up the base over token "hot button" issues that never go anywhere in Congress, but make for good primetime talkathon fodder. A new poll released by Gallup yesterday has quantified the skepticism of the American people, and shows empirical proof that the games Democrats play have serious consequences when it comes to the level of trust voters have in their ability to lead on the major issues. In late September, Gallup asked registered voters to rate the importance of 13 preselected issues, and then to identify which party they believed would do a better job handling those issues. The results looked like this: h7fjmcrciu6d7y5yx_-zjq

Posted by Amy Miller on September 30, 2014 4 Comments
A recent Gallup poll shows that Americans are fairly evenly divided in their beliefs about the proper roll of government. When asked to rate their preference on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 meaning the respondent prefers limited government, and 5 meaning the respondent prefers a government that takes active steps to improve the lives of citizens) 35% of Americans said that they would prefer Washington take a more limited role in their daily lives. 32%, on the other hand, favor big government, and the remaining third of respondents fell somewhere in between. Via Gallup:
Gallup has asked this question four times since 2010, and each time, Americans have divided themselves roughly into thirds favoring a more active government, a less active government, or something in between. This division is especially noteworthy because the government's role in solving the nation's problems has been arguably more salient in recent years during the housing crisis, financial crisis, economic recession, and passage of the Affordable Care Act.
Generally speaking, Republicans favor a smaller role for government, while Democrats are happy with expanding federal reach. One thing that Americans do seem to agree on, however, is the current level of influence policymakers in Washington have on our everyday lives:

Posted by Amy Miller on September 15, 2014 9 Comments
Gallup's new poll on Americans' level of trust in our three branches of government has revealed exactly what you would expect: they don't. We already know that likely voters, for the most part (but just barely,) have some idea of who controls the House and the Senate, but this new poll from Gallup offers a whole new perspective that could make that knowledge even more valuable to conservative campaigns as November looms ever closer. Via Gallup:
Americans have generally had the least trust in the legislative branch, consisting of the House of Representatives and the Senate, but never lower than the 28% who do so now. The prior low was the 31% measured in 2011, shortly after Congress and the president engaged in contentious debt-ceiling negotiations. Trust in the legislative branch had recovered slightly during the previous two years, to 34%, but is down significantly this year. As recently as 2007, 50% of Americans trusted Congress, but that trust has eroded amid a struggling economy and an era of intense partisan gridlock. This has been particularly acute since Congress was divided between a Republican House and a Democratic Senate after the 2010 elections.
This isn't surprising; between the stalemate in the Senate, cannibalism in the House, and no clear consensus on the part of conservatives as to how we should go about actually getting an agenda passed, it's no wonder America has exactly zero faith in either party's ability to get it right. The situation with trust in the executive branch doesn't look much better:
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