Public Opinion Strategies

As Americans prepare to ring in 2011 and pledge their New Year resolutions there is little doubt they have few regrets about leaving 2010, and in fact the last decade, in the past.
Our latest NBC/WSJ poll* shows that just 12% of the nation considers the last ten years to be a “very good decade” or “one of [...] Read more

I’ve written a lot over the last year about Independents doing an about-turn on President Obama.  This was the group that helped catapult Barack Obama to the Oval Office in 2008, but over the last two years they have expressed some serious reservations.  Their approval rating on the President’s performance has plummeted from 58% approve/28% [...] Read more

In our latest NBC/WSJ poll* President Obama gets a poor report card from the American public, and while he’s not up for re-election this year, his ratings will have an impact on the outcome of the mid-term elections.
Consider the evidence: Read more

This month the President’s job performance rating is at 47% approve, 48% disapprove.  This is the [...] Read more

By Neil Newhouse & Alex Bratty
Last week we gave you a brief overview of Walmart Moms and why they are the quintessential swing voter this November. In this posting, we dig a little deeper into our national survey results* to profile the economic and personal stress these women are carrying with them daily…and potentially into [...] Read more

Our latest NBC/WSJ poll* provides an interesting look at Independents and how they view the role of government.
Overall, Americans are divided between whether “government should do more to solve problems and help meet the needs of people” (47%), or “government is doing too many things better left to businesses and individuals” (49%).
Not surprisingly, Republicans and [...] Read more

By Neil Newhouse & Alex Bratty
Public Opinion Strategies first identified Walmart Moms as a swing voter group in the 2008 election cycle, and several folks have asked us recently if this group will once again emerge as a key voting bloc in November. One of the sources of this inquiry was – not surprisingly – [...] Read more

By Bill McInturff and Alex Bratty
As the 2010 election season heats up our latest NBC/WSJ poll* is hot off the press this week with some illuminating data about where things are headed this November. We’ve been signaling for a while now that the landscape favors Republicans this year, and this poll indicates that things are [...] Read more

Post Barack Obama up against George W. Bush and Americans say Bush is to blame for the current state of the economy (59% to Obama’s 25%), and the current federal budget deficit (60% to Obama’s 22%).*  Well, sure.  As anyone who’s ever had anything go wrong at the office knows, it’s always easy to pin [...] Read more

President Obama and the Democrats have caught up to the fact their Base voters don’t seem that interested in showing up to vote this year.
Unfortunately for them, this is not a new trend. We’ve been watching this for several months, noting the unprecedented interest gap in November’s elections between self-identified Republicans (67% “very interested”) and [...] Read more

Since 2005, Public Opinion Strategies has read and coded every gubernatorial state of the state speech to track emerging issues. (Yes, it’s a long and tedious job, but someone has to do it!)  All the speeches for 2010 have now been given and so it’s time to assess what’s important in the states and what [...] Read more