60 Minutes/Vanity Fair Poll: July Edition

Welcome to the 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll for July. July 1st is the first day of the second half of 2012 and promises to be both an exciting and tense time for America. Exciting for the promise that a presidential election brings to the country, and tense due to the economic challenges and conditions that continue to weigh our economy down from both inside and outside of our borders. What better way is there to relax and enjoy all that is both great and good about America, than by celebrating the Fourth of July with family and friends?

Our second president, John Adams, presciently observed "it ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more." Our third president, Thomas Jefferson, wrote and presided over the Declaration of Independence that stated, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...that among these (rights) are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." They were the only two American presidents to sign the Declaration and the two friends both died on July 4, 1826 -- 50 years to the day after it was ratified by Congress.

To all of our readers, happy Fourth of July, and now the results of our poll...

Fifty-five percent of Americans admitted to checking their work e-mails even when they are on vacation. They logged on anywhere from several times a day to every few days or less. The lucky rest (around 45 percent) said they never check it when they are vacationing. It would probably be preferable to most people to never have to check it, but in these times of job insecurity it is pretty easy to understand why they might. The overarching moral of the story may be, the more indispensable you think you are, the more you need to never check it.

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A Sophie's choice if ever there was one. Sixty-two percent of Americans would lose their money, 17 percent would lose their significant other and 12 percent would lose their mind. Money is replaceable in many instances but it is not as easy to replace a loved one, let alone your mind. Only 52 percent of Americans making less than $50,000 a year said they would rather lose their money. That's a strong indication of the economic insecurity that still prevails in the country.

Only three percent of Americans will admit to having pretended to be Canadian when traveling abroad. Just how do you do that? Would you go up to someone and say, "Love that old time hockey, eh?" There may be some advantages to being a Canadian versus an American. What's the biggest one that comes to mind? Canadians may just have a better National Anthem.

If you were lucky when you were young, your Mom or Dad taught you that to make a good first impression, you look someone in the eye (35 percent) and give them a firm handshake (22 percent) and a friendly smile (34 percent). That advice takes care of over 90 percent of the responses. Good posture (six percent) and dry palms (one percent) are good too.

It appears that the Donald has trumped even his own healthy self-image with this one. Half of Americans deduced that the real estate mogul would most likely say something positive about himself. Twenty-four percent did not know and the other 25 percent wrongly guessed that he may have actually said something that was self-deprecating. Here's the payoff, when was the last time you heard a very smart guy call himself "a very smart guy"?

Thirty-one percent of Americans correctly identified Bubba Watson as being a professional golfer. Seventeen percent guessed that he was a famous blues guitarist, six percent chose governor of Virginia and two percent thought he was a celebrity chef.

Amazingly, 44 percent did not know that he recently won the world's most prestigious golf title -- the Masters -- with an unforgettable recovery shot out of the woods. If he keeps playing like that they won't be forgetting his name very much longer.

Nearly half (47 percent) of Americans said they never read the obituaries, especially those under the age of 45. Thirty-one percent read them once in a while, eight percent most of the time and 14 percent said they always read them. As Americans get older, over 65, they tend to read the "Irish Sports Pages" more often.

How close would you have to be with someone to donate one of your kidneys to them to save their life? For 34 percent of Americans it would be a close friend or extended family member. Twenty-nine percent said they would give one to a spouse or a child, 18 percent said they would donate to anyone, seven percent said an acquaintance and 10 percent said, "No thanks."

Gas prices (83 percent) fuel many more concerns in American households than stock prices (15 percent) do. Even two-thirds of Americans making over $100,000 are still more worried about gas prices than stock prices. That's pretty compelling evidence that the price of gas is going to be a hot button issue in this year's election.

And now this month's fantasy question takes us on some of history's greatest expeditions. Which expedition would most Americans like to have been part of? The winner with 39 percent of the vote is Apollo 11, the mission where Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first men to walk on the moon. Twenty-nine percent said they would have gone with Lewis and Clark to see the big country and its inhabitants in their most pristine and yet wild conditions. Fourteen percent would have sailed with Columbus to see the marvels of the New World in 1492 and 11 percent would have traveled with Marco Polo along the Spice Route and the Silk Road to see the exotic Asian continent.

It's a question as old as the ages, should the "world's oldest profession" be deemed legal between consenting adults? As with many moral questions in America, the country is evenly divided. Forty-seven percent of Americans presumably from a more liberal or libertarian stripe say yes. A few more Americans (49 percent) from a more conservative viewpoint, perhaps a last vestige of our Puritan heritage, say no.

This poll was conducted at the CBS News interviewing facility among a random sample of 976 adults nationwide, interviewed by telephone May 31-June 3, 2012. Phone numbers were dialed from random digit dial samples of both standard land-line and cell phones. The error due to sampling for results based on the entire sample could be plus or minus three percentage points. The error for subgroups is higher.

This poll release conforms to the Standards of Disclosure of the National Council on Public Polls. To read more about this poll, click here.