Free Republic

Most Americans say Joe Biden and Donald Trump — their parties’ undisputed 2024 frontrunners — are not “fit” to serve another term as president, according to a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll. The survey of 1,638 U.S. adults, which was conducted from July 13-17, goes a step further than previous soundings by both Yahoo News/YouGov and other outlets, which have tended to ask whether Biden and Trump should run again — and have tended to find that most Americans would rather they didn’t. Instead, the new poll asked a more pointed question: Whether the two human beings most likely to occupy...

A new Yahoo News/YouGov poll finds that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis now leads former President Donald Trump by 5 percentage points in the race for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. Trump previously led DeSantis by double-digit margins among registered voters who describe themselves as Republicans or Republican-leaning independents. Meanwhile, DeSantis is ahead by even more — a whopping 11 points — among Americans who say they voted in a 2016 Republican primary or caucus in their state. The poll of 1,635 U.S. adults, which was conducted from Dec. 1 to 5, is one of the first to confirm how far...

Despite a mountain of evidence showing the 2020 presidential contest wasn’t rigged against Donald Trump, nearly 6 in 10 Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (57 percent) now say they will not vote in upcoming elections for any candidate who admits that Joe Biden won the presidency "fair and square." Only 17 percent say they would consider voting for a candidate who accurately characterizes Biden’s victory as legitimate. These numbers underscore the degree to which Trump’s “big lie” claiming Biden cheated his way into the White House — a falsehood that three-quarters of Trump voters (74 percent) now believe — has become...

Conservatives claim that schools are indoctrinating students in “critical race theory.” Liberals argue that conservatives don’t even know what critical race theory is — and that if they did, they’d realize teachers aren’t actually exposing kids to it.But a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll suggests that the roiling culture war over so-called CRT isn’t about whether today’s schoolchildren are suddenly probing the complexities of an academic approach to race that originated among legal scholars in the mid-1970s.Rather, the clash over CRT — aside from whatever the term now connotes in the public imagination — appears to be a supercharged spinoff of...

Americans believe that President Biden faced bigger challenges than his predecessor Donald Trump during his first 100 days in office — and performed better than Trump despite those difficulties, according to a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll. The survey of 1,558 U.S. adults, which was conducted from April 27 to April 29, found that less than a third say Trump’s challenges were bigger than Biden’s (31 percent) or that Trump performed better (32 percent) during the first 100 days of his presidency. Pluralities say Biden has performed better than Trump (41 percent) in the face of greater obstacles (37 percent). The...

Not so ‘woke’ And then there were 14. The ranks of white, male Democrats who seem to have surveyed the party’s sprawling primary field and concluded that America clearly needs another president who looks like them continued to expand this week. Montana Gov. Steve Bullock and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio followed in the footsteps of other little-known white dudes such as Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan, California Rep. Eric Swalwell, Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton and Colorado Sen. Michael Bennett, launching their own late-breaking presidential bids. Bullock and de Blasio’s back-to-back announcements mean that a full 61 percent of the...

Over the course of his brief, polarizing career in electoral politics, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has been called many names, especially by liberals. "Dirty Syrup Guzzler" (Jon Stewart). "Creature from the Nether Regions" (Cher). “"The Most Dangerous Canadian in America" (the Huffington Post). Yet so far the most indelible description of Cruz has come from a fellow conservative. In 2013, when Cruz decided to protest U.S. drone policy by filibustering the nomination of incoming CIA chief John Brennan, John McCain told reporter Jon Ward.. now a senior political correspondent for Yahoo News .. that his junior colleague was a "wacko...

Remember what I wrote last week about the McCain campaign pulling back the curtain and finally allowing the press and the public to interact, however fleetingly, with its long-sequestered vice-presidential nominee? Um, nevermind. Knowing that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is currently visiting Manhattan, Father of Stumper a . . . .

Around 12:30 this afternoon, I posted an item here on Stumper called "Palin's Favorability Ratings Begin to Falter." It was a relatively straightforward bit of analysis. Taking my numbers from the only poll to track daily favorability ratings for each presidential and vice-presidential candidate--Diageo/Hotline--I pointed out that Palin's approval stats had undergone a net swing of -10 points since peaking last week. "It's the start of an inevitable process," I wrote. "Between now and Nov. 4, voters will stop seeing Palin as a fascinating story and starting taking her measure as an actual candidate for office. Some will approve; some...

Right now, much of the political world is obsessing over a series of new polls indicating that the gap between Barack Obama and John McCain is shrinking.A just-released Quinnipiac survey, for example, shows McCain cutting Obama’s lead from nine points (50%-41%) to five (47%-42%), while the latest LA Times/Bloomberg sounding pegs Obama’s edge at a mere two points (45%-43%)--down from 12 points (49% to 37%) last month. The new numbers from Reuters/Zogby even have McCain ahead by five (46%-41%). But according to Tom Holbrook, professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and author of "Do Campaigns Matter?", these...