While the favorability rating of local and state governments has only declined slightly in the past decade, Americans’ rating of the federal government has collapsed according to Pew Research polling. Just a third of Americans have a favorable opinion of the federal government, the lowest positive rating in 15 years. Yet opinions about state and [...]

The real turning point in Mitt Romney’s effort to secure the Republican nomination appears to have been his victory in Michigan, according to analysis by Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. After Romney’s tight victory in the Michigan primary on Feb. 28, news coverage about his candidacy became measurably more favorable and the [...]

With the general election campaign now unofficially started a string of new national polls shows a close race between President Obama and Mitt Romney. A CBS News/NYT poll has the race completely tied. From CBS News: Mr. Obama and Romney each received support from 46 percent of registered voters when asked who they would vote [...]

The bulk of the Republican base has come around to accepting that Mitt Romney will be their nominee. According to Pew Research 74% of Republicans and Republican leaning voters think he will definitely get the nomination. In addition the poll found that a plurality of the GOP base now feels that continuing the primary is [...]

When people hear the name Mitt Romney the most common real descriptive word that springs to people’s mind is “rich,” just behind “no/no way.” If you treat “rich” and “wealthy” as basically the same response, then it is by far the most common concept people use to describe Romney. This is a big swing from [...]

Mitt Romney continues to do poorly with evangelical voters in the Republican primary according to analysis by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life: I feel the power of the actual ‘evangelical vote’ is sometimes overstated because it is often used as shorthand to mean all very social conservative voters, including groups with very [...]

Since entering the election year President Obama hasn’t taken many concrete steps to reignite enthusiasm among his potential supporters beyond adopting a tougher rhetorical tone about inequality and criticizing the Republican candidates’ positions. It seems the Obama campaign so far is mainly banking on a “but the other guys are so much worse” strategy to [...]

President Obama’s job approval rating has started to break the very important 50 percent mark according to three new national polls. The CBS News/New York Times poll found him at 50 percent approval to 43 percent disapproval, CNN/ORC International has him at 50 percent approval to 48 percent disapproval, and the Democracy Corps poll puts [...]

The good news for Rick Santorum keeps on coming. Santorum now has surged to a modest two point lead over Mitt Romney in Pew Research national Republican primary polling. The poll was conducted from February 8-12 directly after Santorum’s three big wins last Tuesday. From Pew: Santorum is beating Romney, because he is now doing [...]

The Republican base may have a favorable view of Mitt Romney, but the rest of the country holds a pretty negative opinion about him. Nationally, his favorable numbers are extremely poor and have been getting worse. Yet even though the American people don’t like Romney, he is within striking distance of beating President Obama. From [...]