What They Told Us: Reviewing Last Week's (May 31 - June 6) Key Polls
Rasmussen Reports
Saturday, June 06, 2009

Most voters continue to approve of the job President Obama is doing, but, as is often the case, the devil is in the details.
Sixty-two percent (62%) of U.S. voters agree with the president that the nation’s ongoing economic problems are due to the recession that began under the Bush administration and don’t blame the actions Obama’s taken since assuming office.
Fifty-one percent (51%) of voters still say the president is a good or excellent leader, although this number is at the lowest level of his presidency to date. Obama also hit his lowest reading ever in the Rasmusen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll at the end of the week, although it remains to be seen whether this is a temporary reaction to recent news or something more substantive.
When it comes to recent actions by the president, the disagreement grows.
Only 21% of voters nationwide support the government plan to bail out General Motors that kicked in last Monday with the troubled auto giant’s bankruptcy. In survey after survey in recent months, Rasmussen Reports has found that Americans are not in a bailout mood, for GM or anybody.
After the auto giant’s bankruptcy filing, 26% of American adults believed it was a good idea for the federal government to take ownership of General Motors, but nearly as many (17%) Americans should protest the bailout by boycotting GM and refusing to buy its cars.
Just 16% say it’s very likely GM will be successful in the next few years.
The number of voters who believe the economic stimulus plan pushed by the president as his one of his first major actions will help the economy is down to 31% - from 34% in late February and 38% who held that view when it first passed earlier that month.
In fact, for the second month in a row, most voters worry that the federal government will do too much in reacting to the country’s current economic problems.
Voters remain closely divided on the urgency for health care reform, another of the president’s top initiatives, given the troubled state of the economy. Forty-six percent (46%) believe the Obama administration should move ahead with health care reform, while 45% say it should wait until the economy improves.
Support for health care reform has slipped slightly as more voters think the president should work harder on his promise to cut the federal deficit in half in the next four years. However, nearly two-thirds of voters think cutting the deficit that much is the priority Obama is least like to achieve.
While the economy remains the most important issue to voters, health care as an issue has dropped to its lowest level of importance in nearly two years of tracking.
The influential Washington newspaper, The Politico, this week reported the broad outlines of a consensus health care reform plan that has emerged among Senate Democrats, and voters have problems with much of it, according to extensive Rasmussen Reports surveying.
There are parallels to the president’s situation in the ongoing saga of his first nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge Sonia Sotomayor. She’s generally regarded favorably and seen thus far as a shoo-in for confirmation, but things become a bit more problematic for her when you get down to specifics.
Over the week since she was introduced to the nation, public support for Judge Sonia Sotomayor has softened a bit, but 88% still say it’s likely that she will be confirmed as the next Supreme Court justice. Sotomayor is also well ahead of the game at this early stage of the confirmation process when compared to President George W. Bush’s high court nominees.
But critics have seized on her comment that a “wise Latina woman” sitting as a judge could reach a different and better decision than a white male judge. Sixty-six percent (66%) of voters nationwide believe that well-qualified male and female judges would reach the same conclusion most of the time. By a virtually identical number (67%), voters believe the same is true of well-qualified white and Hispanic judges.
Sotomayor’s opponents also think her comments suggest that she will be governed not just the law as written but by her sense of social justice in making her judicial decisions. Eighty-three percent (83%) of voters say America’s legal system should apply the law equally to all Americans rather than using the law to help those who have less power and influence.
The president ended the week overseas on a trip that included a highly-publicized outreach speech in Cairo, Egypt to Muslims worldwide. But just 28% of U.S. voters think America’s relationship with the Muslim world will be better a year from today.
Working in Obama’s favor are continuing signs of growing economic confidence. The Rasmussen Employment Index was up in May for the third straight month and at its highest level since last December. It still has a long way to go, though, with worker confidence down 18 points from a year ago.
The Discover Consumer Spending Monitor also rose for the third month in a row in May to its highest reading since last September. Economic confidence among consumers is at its highest level since September 2007.
In the short term, however, both the Rasmussen Consumer and Investor Indexes fell at week’s end.
One test of how voters feel about the president and his party will come in November in the gubernatorial races in two key states, New Jersey and Virginia. New Jersey Republicans in a state primary last Tuesday picked former federal prosecutor Chris Christie to be their candidate against embattled Democratic incumbent Gov. Jon Corzine.
Our first poll on the Garden State showdown shows Christie with 51% of the vote while Corzine is supported by 38%. Also in New Jersey, we’re pleased to note that Rasmussen Reports was the most accurate of all polling firms for New Jersey’s Republican Primary. Our final poll showed Christie up by 11 percentage points and he won by 13.
On Tuesday, Virginia Democrats pick their candidate for governor to run against Republican Bob McDonnell. Look for our first numbers on that General Election campaign later in the week.
In other polls last week:
-- With two of the nation’s Big Three automakers in bankruptcy and the economy still a mess, Americans continue to view corporate chief executive officers as the lowest of the low.
-- The number of Democrats in the nation increased by more than half a percentage point to 39.4% in May. The number of Republicans remained unchanged from a month ago, while the number not affiliated with either major party fell.
-- Democratic and Republican congressional candidates have each lost support from voters this week, but Democrats came in just ahead in the latest edition of the Generic Ballot.
-- Seventy-four percent (74%) of voters say it is unlikely there will be lasting peace between the Palestinians and Israel within the next decade.
-- For the second straight week, 37% of likely voters say the United States is heading in the right direction.
-- The Department of Justice on Tuesday said the state of Georgia cannot check driver’s license information and Social Security numbers to prove that prospective voters are U.S. citizens. Rasmussen Reports polling shows that Georgia’s voters have an entirely different perspective.
-- Conan O'Brien officially replaced Jay Leno as host of NBC's "The Tonight Show" last Monday, but Johnny Carson is still the king of late-night comedy as far as Americans are concerned.