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July 29, 2009

Poll Watch: CBS News/New York Times Political Survey

CBS News/New York Times Political Survey

Do you approve or disapprove of the way Barack Obama is handling his job as President?

Approve 58%

Disapprove 30%

Among Independents

Approve 52%

Disapprove 33%

Do you approve or disapprove of the way Barack Obama is handling the economy?

Approve 51%

Disapprove 41%

Among Independents

Approve 46%

Disapprove 46%

Do you approve or disapprove of the way Barack Obama is handling the federal budget deficit?

Approve 40%

Disapprove 43%

Among Independents

Approve 35%

Disapprove 45%

So far, do you think the federal government’s stimulus package has made the economy better, made the economy worse, or has it had no impact on the economy so far?

Better 25%

Worse 13%

No impact 57%

Among Independents

Better 21%

Worse 13%

No impact 62%

Do you think the federal government’s stimulus package has made the economy in your local community better, made the economy in your local community worse, or has it had no impact on the economy in your local community so far?

Better 19%

Worse 12%

No impact 65%

Among Independents

Better 13%

Worse 14%

No impact 68%

In the long run, do you think the federal government’s stimulus package will make the economy better, will make the economy worse, or will it have no impact on the economy in the long run?

Better 44%

Worse 22%

No impact 28%

Among Independents

Better 42%

Worse 24%

No impact 28%

In the long run, do you think the federal government’s stimulus package will make the economy in your local community better, will make the economy in your local community worse, or will it have no impact on the economy in your local community in the long run?

Better 44%

Worse 13%

No impact 37%

Among Independents

Better 41%

Worse 17%

No impact 37%

From what you know so far, which comes closest to your own view? 1. the economic stimulus package has already created a substantial number of new jobs in the U.S. OR 2. it will create a substantial number of new jobs but hasn’t done that yet OR 3. it will not create a substantial number of new jobs?

Has already created jobs 4%

Will create jobs 53%

Will not create new jobs 41%

Earlier this year, Congress passed a nearly 800 billion dollar stimulus package in order to get the economy back on track. Some people say the stimulus package was not large enough, others say it was too large. In the months ahead, if things continue the way they are now, would you favor or oppose the government spending additional money on another stimulus package?

Favor 27%

Oppose 65%

Among Independents

Favor 23%

Oppose 68%

Would you favor or oppose another stimulus package, if passing an additional stimulus package meant that the federal budget deficit would increase?

Favor 18%

Oppose 74%

Which comes closer to your own view? The federal government should spend money to stimulate the national economy, even if it means increasing the budget deficit, OR The federal government should NOT spend money to stimulate the national economy and should instead focus on reducing the budget deficit.

Stimulate the economy 35%

Reduce budget deficit 58%

In order to reduce the federal budget deficit, would you be willing or not willing for the government to provide fewer services, in areas such as health care, education and defense spending?

Willing 31%

Not willing 53%

In order to reduce the federal budget deficit, would you be willing or not willing to pay more in taxes?

Willing 41%

Not willing 56%

Do you approve or disapprove of the way Barack Obama is handling health care?

Approve 46%

Disapprove 38%

Among Independents

Approve 43%

Disapprove 41%

Do you approve or disapprove of the way Barack Obama is handling foreign policy?

Approve 54%

Disapprove 24%

Among Independents

Approve 51%

Disapprove 24%

In his first few months in office, do you think Barack Obama has been trying to accomplish too much, trying to accomplish too little, or trying to accomplish about the right amount?

Too much 48%

Too little 5%

About right 45%

Among Independents

Too much 51%

Too little 4%

About right 42%

Is your opinion of Barack Obama favorable, or not favorable?

Favorable 50%

Not favorable 23%

Do you think Barack Obama has the same priorities for the country as you have, or doesn’t he?

Yes 62%

No 31%

Who do you think is mostly to blame for the current state of the nation’s economy?

Bush administration 30%

Wall Street and financial institutions 29%

Congress 12%

Obama administration 4%

Someone else 7%

Among Independents

Wall Street and financial institutions 27%

Bush administration 22%

Congress 16%

Obama administration 3%

Someone else 9%

Regardless of how you usually vote, who do you think is more likely to make the right decisions about the nation’s economy — Barack Obama or the Republicans in Congress?

Barack Obama 56%

Republicans in Congress 25%

Thinking about the country as a whole, do you think most police generally treat blacks and Hispanics better than whites, do they treat blacks and Hispanics worse than whites, or do they generally treat all groups the same?

Better than whites 3%

Worse than whites 38%

Same as whites 46%

How would you say things are going for the U.S. in its efforts to bring stability and order to Iraq?

Very well 7%

Somewhat well 49%

Somewhat badly 25%

Very badly 12%

What is your impression of how the war in Afghanistan is going for the United States right now?

Very well 3%

Somewhat well 30%

Somewhat badly 39%

Very badly 18%

Survey of 1,050 adults was conducted July 24-28. The margin of error is +/- 3 percentage points. Party ID breakdown: 46% (I); 34% (D); 20% (R).

by Aron Goldman @ 8:45 pm. Filed under Barack Obama, Democrats, Issues, Poll Watch, Republican Party

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14 Responses to “Poll Watch: CBS News/New York Times Political Survey”

Adam Says:
July 29th, 2009 at 8:57 pm
52/33 among Independents? Why is this always a total bullshit poll? It ALWAYS skews WAY to the left – more than any other poll – without fail.
Flip Dixon Says:
July 29th, 2009 at 9:06 pm
Why we have such big deficits:

In order to reduce the federal budget deficit, would you be willing or not willing for the government to provide fewer services, in areas such as health care, education and defense spending?

Willing 31%
Not willing 53%

In order to reduce the federal budget deficit, would you be willing or not willing to pay more in taxes?

Willing 41%
Not willing 56%
Emtee Says:
July 29th, 2009 at 9:08 pm
Wow a majority in New York think that budget deficit reduction is a higher priority than stimulating the economy!! That is huge!! Now we need to make our politicians stop spending money like drunken sailors and reduce the darn deficit like the people want.
Aron Goldman Says:
July 29th, 2009 at 9:16 pm
Emtee,

This is a national survey conducted by The New York Times and CBS News.
Kristofer Lorelli Says:
July 29th, 2009 at 9:20 pm
Schwarzenegger just said he ‘wishes he could run for President’.
Kristofer Lorelli Says:
July 29th, 2009 at 9:23 pm
Schwarzenegger just said Gingrich was the most innovative Republican today, the most substantive.
MWS Says:
July 29th, 2009 at 9:26 pm
Kris,

I doubt anyone is standing in line for the Schwarzenegger endorsement right now.
Thunder Says:
July 29th, 2009 at 9:56 pm
Flip Dixon Says:
Why we have such big deficits:

For once, you speak as a conservative, congrats!
still hurting in AZ Says:
July 29th, 2009 at 10:17 pm
CBS News? NY Times? This poll was doomed to be a deception before it started.
Aron Goldman Says:
July 29th, 2009 at 11:31 pm
Analysis: The long shadow of Mitt Romney
http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2009/07/the_long_shadow.html

When the last Republican governor, Mitt Romney, left the State House to run for president, many Massachusetts Republicans celebrated his ambition and wished him well. Some Republicans, though, had a different message: Good riddance.

Their beef with Romney: They thought he was selfish, that he was furthering his own political career at the expense of the Republican Party in his home state. They felt Romney’s growing focus on social issues — namely his outspoken opposition to gay marriage, abortion rights, and stem-cell research — damaged the GOP brand in the Bay State, which had historically emphasized fiscal conservatism and moderate social positions.

“One thing that hasn’t worked well for Republicans all across New England is the tilt toward social issues that the national party has taken,” state Senator Richard Tisei, then the incoming Senate minority leader, said as Romney was preparing to leave the State House in 2006. “I think the governor, in his attempts to position himself in the Republican primary, has highlighted a lot of social issues, and I think, quite frankly, that hurt [Lieutenant Governor] Kerry Healey and it also … blurred the differences that we’ve had with the national party.”

It is no coincidence that Tisei will serve as campaign chairman of the GOP’s newest hope: Charles D. Baker, the former health care executive and Weld administration official who today formally joined next year’s gubernatorial race.

Baker, judging from his early steps in the campaign, will try to thread the Republican needle of old, expressing socially moderate views but positioning himself as a fiscal conservative. Look for him to embrace the Romney messages of competent management and fiscal responsibility, while deliberately eschewing his socially conservative rhetoric, which was always designed to appeal to the Republican base nationwide.

In filing his papers today, Baker offered some hints of what tack he will take. He immediately pledged not to raise taxes, even saying he would try to lower the state’s newly increased sales tax – which will go from 5 percent to 6.25 percent on Saturday – if elected. “Read my lips: No new taxes,” Baker said, never mind that the pledge was made famous when George H.W. Bush broke it. Baker also called for “a complete overhaul of the way the state builds the budget and manages its affairs.”

“I’m going to make that my primary priority,” he said.

What’s not going to be a priority? Pushing a socially conservative agenda. Baker went to great lengths to cite his bonafides as a social moderate, if not a social liberal. Not only does Baker support abortion rights, he believes in gay marriage, for personal reasons.

“My brother’s gay, and he’s married, and he lives in Massachusetts, so I’m for it,” he said. “Is that straight enough?”

He added, “I’m not going to participate in national discussions and national politics; I’m interested in what happens here in Massachusetts. I’m very comfortable with my party in Massachusetts.”
Aron Goldman Says:
July 29th, 2009 at 11:52 pm
Giuliani: GOP lacks leader who can attack Obama’s policies
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/07/29/giuliani.republicans/

Republicans should focus on President Obama’s “left-wing” policies and not get sidetracked by “false” issues such as the validity of his birth certificate, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said on Wednesday.

Giuliani lamented the lack of a strong Republican leader who could direct the party’s attention to what he called “the most left-wing agenda … since Roosevelt.”

“We don’t have a real leader of the party right now because we don’t have a president, we don’t have presidential candidates,” Giuliani said. “So everybody gets to speak their minds.”

Giuliani, an unsuccessful candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, criticized Obama’s domestic policies, including the economic stimulus package and proposed overhaul of the health care system, saying they expand government and threaten economic stability.

“I think he has gone much further to the left than I thought he would,” Giuliani said.

He was less critical of Obama’s foreign policy so far, agreeing with the increased military focus on Afghanistan and Obama’s low-key approach to June’s controversial Iranian presidential election and the subsequent demonstrations and government crackdown.

“I think some of my Republican colleagues sort of instinctively criticized that,” he said of the Iran situation. “I’m not sure I wouldn’t have done the same thing and not get America, you know, deeply involved in that.”

Asked about questions by some conservatives about whether Obama is a U.S. citizen, Giuliani laughed and said, “We’ve got better things to do than that.”

“I’ve actually seen a birth certificate that kind of satisfies me that he was born in the United States,” he said. “I don’t get the issue. I don’t know why they’re pushing it as far as they are. … To pick false issues like that hurts us more than it hurts the other side.”

Giuliani said one possible Republican leader is former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who impressed him on the campaign trail last year.

“I thought she was a really good governor. … I thought she had done a really good job,” he said. “There are a lot of questions because of all of the things that have been raised. She had the chance to answer them all. And I think she’s a real presence in our party.”

Asked if he would run for president again, Giuliani didn’t rule it out.

“I don’t know. We’ll see,” he said, adding, “We’ll have to decide that some time at the end of this year.”
Aron Goldman Says:
July 29th, 2009 at 11:58 pm
Pawlenty Lays Out His Vision For Future
Possible 2012 GOP Presidential Candidate Will Hit Obama on Health Care in Major Speech; Knocks Romney Plan in Letter
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/07/29/politics/main5196674.shtml

Last month, Gov. Tim Pawlenty, R-Minn., told CBS News’ Bob Schieffer he’s going to spend the next couple of years trying “to lend voice in Minnesota and elsewhere about the future of the Republican Party, and if that that gets some traction great, if not, that’s okay too.”

It appears that Pawlenty, who has announced he won’t seek a third term as governor in 2010, will be doing just that Thursday at the Republican National Committee’s summer meeting in San Diego.

An advisor to Pawlenty tells CBS News that “Governor Pawlenty will introduce himself to an important group of Republican leaders and lay out the case for why President Obama’s policies are taking America in the wrong direction.”

He’ll focus on three major topics, the advisor adds: the federal budget, health care and foreign affairs.

On the budget: “The Democrats say we can’t restrain spending in a recession, but look at what Governor Pawlenty did in Minnesota. In his six and half years as governor, he balanced the budget every year without raising taxes, including eliminating a $4.5 billion deficit in 2005 and a $4.8 billion deficit in 2009,” the advisor said.

On foreign affairs: “Having just returned from Iraq and Afghanistan, Governor Pawlenty believes are troops are ready to win. It’s up to our political leaders to give them the tools and support to do it,” the advisor said.

And on health care: “The health care debate in Washington is more than a difference between the two parties. Obamacare replaces independence with dependence, and increase costs with the false excuse of reducing costs. Reform must include incentives for citizens to be wise health care consumers. That’s what Governor Pawlenty did in Minnesota, successfully savings costs,” added the advisor.

Meantime on Tuesday, Pawlenty wrote a letter to the Minnesota Congressional Delegation criticizing the current health care proposals floating around Capitol Hill.

“The health care reform bill before Congress is similar in some respects to the experiment undertaken in Massachusetts. That state’s experience should caution against this approach,” he wrote.

Those comments about the Massachusetts plan were seen as a veiled jab at potential 2012 rival former Gov. Mitt Romney, R-Mass., who signed it into law in 2006 when he was governor and touted its success on the presidential campaign trail in 2008 and after he dropped out.

“Health-care reform is working in Massachusetts,” Romney wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed on July 12, 2008.

Pawlenty denied he was targeting Romney; he says he was merely just pointing out that the program’s costs are rising at a time when the state’s revenues are falling.

“I want to make it clear Mitt Romney is a friend, and he hasn’t been in charge of that system for going on four years,” Pawlenty said on Fox News Tuesday. “And the letter doesn’t even mention him by name. It just expresses a concern about that reform’s failure to control costs. … It’s not a model that we should follow.”

Boosting His Profile

Thursday’s speech comes at a time when Pawlenty is working on increasing his national profile; he just accepted the job as vice chairman of the Republican Governors Association and is widely considered a potential 2012 presidential candidate, though he says he’s not thinking about that right now.

His remarks are an opportunity for him to introduce himself to Republican activists and donors from around the country. It’ll also be his first in a series of speeches he’ll give to the party faithful over the coming months, the next being on August 14 at GOPAC’s annual summit.

In addition to laying out his ideas of how to run against President Obama, his speech is also an opportunity for him to offer up his vision for how the Republican Party should proceed.

That vision combines some of the bedrock beliefs of the GOP (fiscal conservatism, anti-abortion) with not-so-core Republican ideas (funded alternative energy projects, supported allowing patients to buy prescription drugs from Canada) and includes the idea that the party needs to reach out to independents and conservative Democrats in order to avoid getting their “tails kicked” in elections, as he put it to Schieffer last month.

Is Pawlenty Running For President?

What does all of this mean for Pawlenty’s future? Is he setting himself up for a presidential run? And is he even a viable candidate?

“Pawlenty has a few advantages that, in combination, no other GOP candidate can boast,” Larry Sabato, Director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, told CBS News.

“He’s won a Democratic state twice for governor – though with less than 50 percent. He is from the North rather than the South, thereby broadening the party’s geographic appeal. And he has a blue-collar background, combating the wealthy image of Republicans.”

Former U.S. Rep. Vin Weber, R-Minn., who is close to both Pawlenty and Romney, adds, “There’s a benefit in having a relatively new face out there.”

“Tim is the newest face out there. He didn’t run [for president] before, he’s a brand new face. There’s an advantage to that,” Weber told CBS News.

Pawlenty record of being fiscally conservative helps too, adds Weber, who predicts that “there will an ideological debate over taxes spending and the expansive role of government” in the 2012 race.

Perhaps, even more importantly, he’s not creating controversy as he jumps onto the national stage, unlike some others in his party.

By now everyone’s heard about two former up-and-comers, Gov. Mark Sanford, R-S.C., and Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev.

Then there’s former Gov. Sarah Palin, R-Alaska, who unlike Pawlenty, is not completing her term as governor before embarking on her political future and has received plenty of criticism for her decision.

However, the Obama machine will be in full force in 2012 and, even as some GOPers hope that the president’s popularity will decline before then, right now, on issues such as the economy and health care, voters don’t have much faith in the Republicans.

If that remains the case in 2012, the Republicans may need a dynamic candidate to go toe-to-toe with the president. And dynamic isn’t necessarily the first adjective that comes to mind when one thinks of Pawlenty.

“Pawlenty isn’t exciting, and in another year, he might not attract much attention,” Sabato said. “But the GOP doesn’t have a lot of good choices on the table for 2012.”

It’s exactly that – the fact that no potential GOP candidates stand out at a time when the party is trying to find its focus – that could wind up working in Pawlenty’s favor.

But first, he’s off to San Diego, to begin the long process of judging whether his message, to use his words, “gets some traction.”
bob Says:
July 30th, 2009 at 1:49 am
#1

Ditto!
Illinoisguy Says:
July 30th, 2009 at 5:21 am
WIth friends like Pawlenty, you don’t really need any enemies.