Public Opinion Strategies

A new national survey conducted by Public Opinion Strategies for Crossroads GPS finds that President Obama’s Jobs Bill is polarizing.  Voters are evenly split on whether or not they support it, they overwhelmingly tell Congress to look at it more in-depth rather than pass it now, and they are evenly split on whether raising taxes [...] Read more

This past week, my wise and insightful partner Glen Bolger posted a blog entry labeled, “The Tipping Point.” It is definitely worth reading.
The premise of the bit is while a majority of voters have become disapproving of the President, there is still a well of good will toward the President personally.   A series of data [...] Read more

Sorry sports fans, this blog post is not about a new NCAA football conference (although it could be).  Instead, it’s about the nine states that George W. Bush won in 2004 but flipped over to Barack Obama in 2008.  The states: Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia.  These are the purplest [...] Read more

For quite some time, Republican pollsters have been making the point to their clients: don’t confuse the attitudes of base and swing voters toward the President.  Base GOP voters do not like Obama’s policies, and  they dislike him personally (some more vehemently than others).  However, we had consistently seen in our polls and focus groups that [...] Read more

With much speculation about Hispanics and the 2012 election, we thought it worth taking a look.  Anecdotally you hear whispers (some louder than others) about President Obama’s erosion in the Hispanic community, that Hispanics are turning against him headed into 2012.  But is it true?
In 2008, Obama received 66% of the Hispanic vote, an impressive [...] Read more

The following two tables always stun Republicans when I do a presentation: Read more

The point is — John McCain got the same percentage of the white vote while losing in 2008 that George W. Bush got in winning the electoral college in 2000 (note to Dems reading this — what has two thumbs and doesn’t care about [...] Read more

A lot of pundits have been overreaching on their analysis of the extraordinarily dramatic data that has shown significant voter anger at Washington.  There have been predictions that incumbents are “unsafe at any speed” and that voters are going to wipe out both Republicans (who after all control the House, where legislation passes before Harry [...] Read more

The Iranian hostage crisis, Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, Lehman Brother’s collapse and the recessions that defined the 1980, 1992 and the 2008 presidential campaigns … these are the signal events that changed and then defined the last 30 years of American politics.
They are joined now by another signal event:  The debt ceiling [...] Read more

Since Truman, five presidents have won re-election and two have lost.   The average Misery Index for the winners was 8.89 the October prior to the November election.
In contrast, the two losers (Presidents Carter and Bush 41), suffered from an average Index of 15.39.  Ouch.
Where is President Obama?  As of last month, the Index was pegged [...] Read more

With State Senator Alberta Darling’s 54% win last night, Public Opinion Strategies helped defend the GOP majority and turn back a public employee union sponsored recall election.
Congratulations to Senator Darling and all of those involved in the campaign.
From the get-go, the campaign used our research to guide its messaging – Darling was NEVER below 50%, [...] Read more