CBS News Poll analysis by the CBS News Polling Unit: Sarah Dutton, Jennifer De Pinto, Fred Backus and Anthony Salvanto.
CBS
With the midterm elections less than a week away, a new CBS News/New York Times poll finds that Republicans continue to hold an advantage over Democrats in the generic House ballot. Forty-six percent of likely voters say they plan to vote Republican, while 40 percent say they will vote Democrat. (Learn more about how to interpret the generic House ballot here.)
The advantage can be attributed in large part to independents, who are breaking hard for the GOP. Forty-seven percent of independent likely voters say they plan to vote Republican, while just 32 percent plan to vote Democrat. Seventeen percent haven't made up their minds.
More than four in five Democrats and Republicans, meanwhile, say they are sticking with their party.
A majority of likely voters say their House vote is a referendum on President Obama, and more are voting against the president than for him. Thirty-two percent are casting a vote against Mr. Obama, while 22 percent are casting their vote to support him. Forty-two percent say their vote is about something else.
The president has been traveling the country to stump for candidates ahead of the midterms, but it may not be much help: a majority of likely voters (56 percent) say Mr. Obama's support for a candidate has no impact on their vote. And while 14 percent say Mr. Obama's support makes them more likely to back a candidate, 29 percent say it makes then less likely to do so.
While most likely voters say they are not more likely to cast a ballot for someone who they see as having extreme beliefs of differing views on major issues this year, nearly half say they are more willing to vote for a candidate from a different party than they usually support. In a sign that voters are fed up with Washington, 59 percent say they are more willing this year to back someone with little previous political experience.
Fifty-two percent of likely voters say they are more enthusiastic about voting this year. But the enthusiasm gap persists: Sixty-three percent of Republicans are more enthusiastic compared to 43 percent of Democrats. Thirty-one percent overall are less enthusiastic about voting this year.
As for who's voting for whom:
Men favor Republican candidates in their House vote this year by eight points, while the Republican edge is narrower among women.
Likely voters under age 45 are divided in their vote for Congress, while older voters are more likely to vote for Republicans.
77% of liberals plan to vote Democratic, but they make up just about a fifth of likely voters this year. Moderates (35% of the electorate) also edge Democratic, but conservatives, who make up four in 10 likely voters, strongly favor Republican candidates.
Six in 10 white evangelicals and eight in 10 Tea Party supporters favor Republican candidates.
The coalitions that voted for Barack Obama and John McCain have mostly held together for this midterm election. 76% of 2008 Obama voters plan to vote Democratic in this election, while 82% of McCain voters plan to vote Republican.
Assessments of the President:
CBS
Forty-five percent of Americans approve of the job President Obama is doing, while 47 percent disapprove. The president's approval rating has not been above 50 percent since April. Just ten percent of Republicans and 36 percent of independents approve of his performance.
As the graphic above illustrates, the president is far more popular among black Americans than whites. More on that here.
Overall, 45 percent of Americans are satisfied with Mr. Obama's presidency so far, while 54 percent are disappointed. A majority of 56 percent, however, are optimistic about the next two years of Mr. Obama's presidency, while 37 percent are pessimistic.
On the economy, the top concern for voters, Mr. Obama's approval rating is 42 percent. Fifty percent disapprove of him on the issue. Fifty-three percent do not think he has a clear plan for creating jobs, and a majority says he has made little to no progress on improving the economy.
Americans are split on whether the president has made progress on making health care affordable for all, and on whether he has made progress in the war in Afghanistan. Sixty-two percent give him at least some credit for moving toward ending the war in Iraq.
First lady Michelle Obama is viewed favorably by 41 percent of Americans and unfavorably by 15 percent. Forty-one percent are undecided.
Views of the Parties and Expectations for a GOP Congress:
Americans see Republicans as more likely to reduce the deficit: 43 percent say the GOP is more likely to do so, compared to 32 percent for Democrats. On health care Democrats have the edge, with 46 percent saying Democrats are more likely to improve health care conditions compared to 28 percent for Republicans. Americans are roughly split on which party is better at creating jobs.
Overall, Democrats are viewed more positively than Republicans. Forty-six percent view Democrats favorably, while 48 percent view them unfavorably. Forty-one percent view Republicans favorably, and 52 percent view them unfavorably.
Eighty-four percent of likely voters expect Republicans in Congress to try to repeal health care reform if elected, and two in three expect them to try to make the 2001 Bush tax cuts permanent for upper income Americans. They are evenly split on whether members of the GOP will try to work with Mr. Obama.
Forty-seven percent of likely voters want the health care law to be repealed. Forty-three percent want it to stand as it is. Those who plan to vote Republican are generally those who favor repeal.
Seventy-five percent of likely voters - and 66 percent of Republicans - said that, if the GOP wins control of Congress, the party should compromise some of its positions to get things done. Seventy-one percent of all voters, and 79 percent of Republicans, said that Mr. Obama should compromise given the possibility of a GOP takeover. More on that here.
Groups with anonymous donors have poured money into the midterm elections, but Americans overwhelmingly support full disclosure of donations: Eighty-one percent call full disclosure "very important." In addition, 58 percent say it is very important that the amount of money campaigns can spend be limited.
Under current law, groups not affiliated with a candidate are able to spend unlimited amounts of money on advertisements during a political campaign. Seventy-two percent say such spending should be limited.
Fifty-seven percent of Americans, including 68 percent of those who receive Social Security, disapprove of the fact that people who receive Social Security payments will not get an increase in the amount they receive in 2011.
More than seven in ten say they oppose reducing benefits for future retirees to keep Social Security solvent, while just 23 percent favor doing so. Americans are more open to raising the retirement age: 42 percent say they favor doing so to keep the program solvent, compared to 54 percent who are opposed.
This poll was conducted among a random sample of 1,173 adults nationwide, interviewed by telephone October 21-26, 2010. An oversample of African Americans was interviewed, for a total of 273 interviews with African Americans. Phone numbers were dialed from RDD samples of both standard land-lines and cell phones. The error due to sampling for results based on the entire sample could be plus or minus three percentage points. The sampling error could be plus or minus six percentage points for the African American sample. The error for subgroups is higher. This poll release conforms to the Standards of Disclosure of the National Council on Public Polls.
The smug arrogant conventional wisdom crowd of main stream media , corrupt pollsters and the Democrat Party establishment hacks are as clueless about the scope of the coming tsunami as the RHINO Republican elites were in the primaries nation wide. The campaign consultants are going to look very foolish on the morning of November 3rd.
It is so sad, so head-shaking, that they don?t understand the degree to which the vast majority of Americans are begging, yearning, for decisive, strong, articulate, powerful, determined, dogged, principled, and rhetorically sound representation from Washington. Most people are sick to death of the posing, the polling, the pandering, the weak-kneed and lily-livered , and / or corrupt federal , state & local politicians & bureaucrats . Most folks I know have NEVER been so deathly serious, so animated, so upset by what the cranks and criminals in Washington and throughout the states government are doing. A GOP LANDSLIDE YOU WILL SEE !!!
Fifteen Lessons the Democrats Need to Learn from the Election Defeat of 2010
1. Don?t pass bills without reading them.
2. When a political party takes its cues from Comedy Central, it is unlikely to win the next election.
3. You don?t create prosperity by spending money you don?t have. That?s how you create poverty.
4. Don?t hold a town hall meeting if you don?t want to hear what voters have to say.
5. Businesses, not government, are the source of productive jobs.
6. You don?t fix industries by giving them 3,000 pages of new regulations.
7. When voters ask for government accountability and fiscal responsibility, politicians should not respond with ridicule?unless they want to be thrown out of office in the next election.
8. You can?t create jobs while punishing the people who do the hiring.
9. Borrowing another $100 billion every month from the Chinese is not a solution to any problem.
10. Elections are won by attention to the issues, not by character attacks, smears and jokes.
11. People won?t hire and expand their businesses if they don?t know what their tax rates will be next year.
12. If you turn the home mortgage into a welfare entitlement, don?t be surprised when the loans aren?t repaid.
13. When you spend your energy trying to silence your political opponents, it?s a sign that you?ve already lost the argument.
14. Don?t promise the voters transparency if you plan to govern via backroom deals.
1. You have to be against capital punishment, but support abortion on demand.
2. You have to believe that businesses create oppression and governments create prosperity.
3. You have to believe that there was no art before Federal funding.
4. You have to believe that gender roles are artificial but being homosexual is natural.
5. You have to believe that the AIDS virus is spread by a lack of federal funding.
6. You have to believe that hunters don't care about nature, but activists who have never been outside of San Francisco do.
7. You have to believe that self-esteem is more important than actually doing something to earn it.
8. You have to believe that Mel Gibson spent $25 million of his own money to make "The Passion of the Christ" for financial gain only.
9. You have to believe the NRA is bad because it supports certain parts of the Constitution, while the ACLU is good because it supports certain parts of the Constitution.
10. You have to believe that taxes are too low, but ATM fees are too high.
11. You have to believe that Margaret Sanger and Gloria Steinem are more important to American history than Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Edison, and Alexander Graham Bell.
12. You have to believe that standardized tests are racist, but racial quotas and set-asides are not.
13. You have to believe that Barrack Hussein Obama is normal and is a very nice person.
14. You have to believe that the only reason socialism hasn't worked anywhere it's been tried is because the right people haven't been in charge.
15. You have to believe conservatives telling the truth belong in jail, but a liar and a sex offender belonged in the White House.
16. You have to believe that homosexual parades displaying drag, transvestites, and bestiality should be constitutionally protected, and manger scenes at Christmas should be illegal.
17. You have to believe that this message is a part of a vast, right wing conspiracy.
18. You have to believe that it's okay to give Federal workers the day off on Christmas Day but it's not okay to say "Merry Christmas."
If the Republikkklan does get into power, it will be interesting to see how the same people that caused this mess get us out. They set it up so that they would ruin the economy under Bushoccio and then the Dems would take over and then they could blame it on them. And it worked perfectly.
But NOW it is about to backfire because they are not taking over a good economy like when the Bushoccio Crime Family did their coup in 2000.
Yes, it IS hard to believe people are so ignorant and forgetful that they would return to power the exact same members of the Bushoccio Crime Family who caused the mess. Oh well, maybe they need another does of Republican fiscal irresponsibility and welfare for the rich.
Maybe we will have to see how the GOP, who are responsible for this Second Great Republican Depression, get us out of it. Should be highly entertaining.
NO HUSSEIN. YOU DECEIVED US IN 2008. YOU HAVEN'T GOT A CLUE AS TO REQUIRED SOLUTIONS.
As the result of your weakening America in a number of MAJOR ways, we will do all we can to vote against your mainly Democrat supporters next Tuesday.
In addition, and based on your anti-America 'enemy accommodations' - both domestically and globally - we the people are in the process of legally having you removed from the Presidency as early as possible. Doing so cannot be too soon!
We are going to take back America for Jesus! What a relief it will be when this country is back to a Christian nation. You folks who are not accepting of Jesus will have to go East ... LOL.
Before Independents cast their vote, they should remember these words:
"There is no job that is America's God-given right anymore."
Those are the sacred words of Carly Fiorina, California's Republican candidate for the Senate
On October 28, CBS published an article by John Gapper titled,"Obama must Learn to Love Big Business." Gapper tells everyone what they can expect once the GOP gets control of Congress.
Gapper argues that the jobs which Carly Fiorina and other Republican CEO's shipped to China will never come back. Gapper favors trade agreements with South Korea, Panama, and Colombia, notorious for its anti-union terrorism, so corporations can off shore more American jobs to countries with cheap labor, supposedly they can get tax cuts for doing so.
In addition Gapper want to " ease restrictions on visas and work permits for foreign students who will otherwise take their skills elsewhere." In more direct language, Gapper wants to expand the so-called "guest worker" program, so that imported workers, who will work for slave labor wages, will take American jobs.
While Gapper suggests that we need to invest in a better trained labor force and a better infrastructure to attract multi-national businesses, he also wants drastic budget cuts. In other words, businesses want the benefits of a 21st century infrastructure, but they don't want to pay for it. As far as more education, we have millions of young people deeply in debt with college degrees who can't get jobs- simply because their jobs have either been outsourced or given to an imported work force
The only things the GOP guarantees are pink slips as corporations give jobs to cheaper labor. In fact, when Carly Fiorina laid off thousands of Hewlitt Packard employees, these employees were forced to train their slave labor work force that took over their jobs.
So if you vote Republican next week and get a pink slip just before Christmas remember, I warned you this would happen. I urge every one to vote Democratic ticket because the job you save may be your own.
Wrong, Bush didn't cut taxes to keep jobs from leaving, he cut taxes to stimulate the economy and it worked. No matter how hard you try and demonize Bush, you can't argue with the lowest average unemployment average in the last four decades, you can't argue the DOW was over 12,000 and you can't argue with strong 3-5% economic growth. We pulled out of the Clinton/Gore recession in spite of 911. Fast forward to this mess we're in. First of all the whole economic meltdown we saw in 2008 was related to Banking and Financial services. There are U-Tube videos far and wide showing democrats denying a problem and republicans warning of exactly what eventually happened......this isn't disputable. Obama's solution is to spend money, well it clearly didn't work. The economic growth is stagnant, unemployment is at record highs, and there's no end in site. It is a failed policy and we're going to fix it Next Tuesday.
By the way, Obama is the one who has expanded the Federal Government while we're losing private sector jobs. He's added over a half million government jobs or his unemployment rate would even be higher. The democrats' only claim each month is that we didn't lose too many more jobs, well with real unemployment at nearly 18% there aren't too many more to lose.
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CBS
CBS
CBS
It is so sad, so head-shaking, that they don?t understand the degree to which the vast majority of Americans are begging, yearning, for decisive, strong, articulate, powerful, determined, dogged, principled, and rhetorically sound representation from Washington. Most people are sick to death of the posing, the polling, the pandering, the weak-kneed and lily-livered , and / or corrupt federal , state & local politicians & bureaucrats . Most folks I know have NEVER been so deathly serious, so animated, so upset by what the cranks and criminals in Washington and throughout the states government are doing. A GOP LANDSLIDE YOU WILL SEE !!!
1. Don?t pass bills without reading them.
2. When a political party takes its cues from Comedy Central, it is unlikely to win the next election.
3. You don?t create prosperity by spending money you don?t have. That?s how you create poverty.
4. Don?t hold a town hall meeting if you don?t want to hear what voters have to say.
5. Businesses, not government, are the source of productive jobs.
6. You don?t fix industries by giving them 3,000 pages of new regulations.
7. When voters ask for government accountability and fiscal responsibility, politicians should not respond with ridicule?unless they want to be thrown out of office in the next election.
8. You can?t create jobs while punishing the people who do the hiring.
9. Borrowing another $100 billion every month from the Chinese is not a solution to any problem.
10. Elections are won by attention to the issues, not by character attacks, smears and jokes.
11. People won?t hire and expand their businesses if they don?t know what their tax rates will be next year.
12. If you turn the home mortgage into a welfare entitlement, don?t be surprised when the loans aren?t repaid.
13. When you spend your energy trying to silence your political opponents, it?s a sign that you?ve already lost the argument.
14. Don?t promise the voters transparency if you plan to govern via backroom deals.
15. It?s the economy, stupid.
1. You have to be against capital punishment, but support abortion on demand.
2. You have to believe that businesses create oppression and governments create prosperity.
3. You have to believe that there was no art before Federal funding.
4. You have to believe that gender roles are artificial but being homosexual is natural.
5. You have to believe that the AIDS virus is spread by a lack of federal funding.
6. You have to believe that hunters don't care about nature, but activists who have never been outside of San Francisco do.
7. You have to believe that self-esteem is more important than actually doing something to earn it.
8. You have to believe that Mel Gibson spent $25 million of his own money to make "The Passion of the Christ" for financial gain only.
9. You have to believe the NRA is bad because it supports certain parts of the Constitution, while the ACLU is good because it supports certain parts of the Constitution.
10. You have to believe that taxes are too low, but ATM fees are too high.
11. You have to believe that Margaret Sanger and Gloria Steinem are more important to American history than Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Edison, and Alexander Graham Bell.
12. You have to believe that standardized tests are racist, but racial quotas and set-asides are not.
13. You have to believe that Barrack Hussein Obama is normal and is a very nice person.
14. You have to believe that the only reason socialism hasn't worked anywhere it's been tried is because the right people haven't been in charge.
15. You have to believe conservatives telling the truth belong in jail, but a liar and a sex offender belonged in the White House.
16. You have to believe that homosexual parades displaying drag, transvestites, and bestiality should be constitutionally protected, and manger scenes at Christmas should be illegal.
17. You have to believe that this message is a part of a vast, right wing conspiracy.
18. You have to believe that it's okay to give Federal workers the day off on Christmas Day but it's not okay to say "Merry Christmas."
Ready to vote?
But NOW it is about to backfire because they are not taking over a good economy like when the Bushoccio Crime Family did their coup in 2000.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MGT_cSi7Rs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MGT_cSi7Rs
As the result of your weakening America in a number of MAJOR ways, we will do all we can to vote against your mainly Democrat supporters next Tuesday.
In addition, and based on your anti-America 'enemy accommodations' - both domestically and globally - we the people are in the process of legally having you removed from the Presidency as early as possible.
Doing so cannot be too soon!
Before Independents cast their vote, they should remember these words:
"There is no job that is America's God-given right anymore."
Those are the sacred words of Carly Fiorina, California's Republican candidate for the Senate
On October 28, CBS published an article by John Gapper titled,"Obama must Learn to Love Big Business." Gapper tells everyone what they can expect once the GOP gets control of Congress.
Gapper argues that the jobs which Carly Fiorina and other Republican CEO's shipped to China will never come back. Gapper favors trade agreements with South Korea, Panama, and Colombia, notorious for its anti-union terrorism, so corporations can off shore more American jobs to countries with cheap labor, supposedly they can get tax cuts for doing so.
In addition Gapper want to " ease restrictions on visas and work permits for foreign students who will otherwise take their skills elsewhere." In more direct language, Gapper wants to expand the so-called "guest worker" program, so that imported workers, who will work for slave labor wages, will take American jobs.
While Gapper suggests that we need to invest in a better trained labor force and a better infrastructure to attract multi-national businesses, he also wants drastic budget cuts. In other words, businesses want the benefits of a 21st century infrastructure, but they don't want to pay for it. As far as more education, we have millions of young people deeply in debt with college degrees who can't get jobs- simply because their jobs have either been outsourced or given to an imported work force
The only things the GOP guarantees are pink slips as corporations give jobs to cheaper labor. In fact, when Carly Fiorina laid off thousands of Hewlitt Packard employees, these employees were forced to train their slave labor work force that took over their jobs.
So if you vote Republican next week and get a pink slip just before Christmas remember, I warned you this would happen. I urge every one to vote Democratic ticket because the job you save may be your own.
Obama's solution is to spend money, well it clearly didn't work. The economic growth is stagnant, unemployment is at record highs, and there's no end in site. It is a failed policy and we're going to fix it Next Tuesday.
By the way, Obama is the one who has expanded the Federal Government while we're losing private sector jobs. He's added over a half million government jobs or his unemployment rate would even be higher. The democrats' only claim each month is that we didn't lose too many more jobs, well with real unemployment at nearly 18% there aren't too many more to lose.