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Gallup's U.S. Job Creation Index reached a new high in its more than six-year trend, registering +27 in May. The prior high had been +26 in the initial monthly measurement of January 2008, just as the recession was taking hold. The index is based on employee reports of hiring activity at their places of employment. The +27 index score for May is based on 40% of employees saying their employer is hiring workers and expanding the size of its workforce and 13% saying their employer is letting workers go and reducing the size of its workforce. Another 41% report no...

Gallup is out with its latest “moral acceptability” survey. On 19 issues, Americans were asked, “In general, do you find the following morally acceptable[?]” The responses were ranked on a scale from “highly acceptable” to “highly unacceptable.” There was one issue – birth control, with 90% approval – that rated “highly acceptable” and nine, with approvals from 57% to 69%, that rated “largely acceptable.”Of those 10 issues, the response to seven of them is Exhibit A in the case of the collapse of the family in America. On two of the other three issues – wearing animal fur and medical...

A strong majority, 63 percent, of Americans now say that same-sex couples should have a legal right to adopt a child, according to a new Gallup poll. About one in three, 35 percent, are opposed. The result is the opposite of 1992, when Gallup first polled the question. Sixty-three percent said homosexual couples should not be legally permitted to adopt in that year. In 1998, that number declined to 57 percent. In 2003 and 2007, Americans were about equally divided on the question. The recent poll was the first time Gallup showed a clear majority supportive of giving same-sex couples...

Americans' support for the law recognizing same-sex marriages as legally valid has increased yet again, now at 55%. Marriage equality advocates have had a string of legal successes over the past year, most recently this week in Pennsylvania and Oregon where federal judges struck down bans on gay marriage. Two successive Gallup polls in 2012 saw support climb from 53% to 54%, indicating a steady but slight growth in acceptance of gay marriages over the past year after a more rapid increase between 2009 and 2011. In the latest May 8-11 poll, there is further evidence that support for gay...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- When asked to rate their state as a place to live, three in four Montanans (77%) and Alaskans (77%) say their state is the best or one of the best places to live. Residents of Rhode Island (18%) and Illinois (19%) are the least likely to praise their states.

The people of North Dakota put more trust and confidence in their state government than people in any other state, while the people of Illinois put the least. In polling done in June through September 2013, Gallup asked at least 600 people in each state this question: “How much trust and confidence do you have in the government of the state where you live when it comes to handling state problems—a great deal, a fair amount, not very much or none at all?” …

Harry Reid and his Senate Democrats held an all-night session last month to draw attention to the fierce urgency of now on anthropogenic global warming — without, of course, bothering to offer any legislation on the issue. After this infomercial, Gallup noted that global warming/climate change fell to almost dead last among 15 issues polled; only race relations polled lower. “Even among Democrats,” I wrote at the time, “climate change only gets 36% mention in a non-exclusive list of concerns — ranking far below the economy (54%), health care (57%), hunger and homelessness (53%), and unemployment (52%).” Environmental issues in...

March 28 (UPI) -- Young U.S. voters have become more likely to identify with the Democratic Party since 2006, a Gallup Poll said Friday. Gallup said the movement is fueled partly by increasing racial and ethnic diversity. But the poll found whites between the ages of 18 and 29 have also shifted to the Democrats in recent years.

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Gallup publishes in February of each year a survey of the extent of self-described religiosity in each state; and they report that religiosity is rising throughout the country. Gallup headlined this year’s survey on February 3rd, “Mississippi Maintains Hold as Most Religious U.S. State; Vermont is the least religious.” Last year, it was “Mississippi Most Religious State, Vermont Least Religious.” No change there: in fact, the rank-orders of the 50 states (plus D.C.) are almost unchanged during the past 12 months. What’s notable is instead that the percentages of people saying that they are “Very religious” have increased in almost...

Obama Job Approval: Each result is based on a three-day rolling average. 1500 adults polled. 39 % approve 53% disapprove

PRINCETON, NJ -- Americans continue to be more likely to identify as conservatives (38%) than as liberals (23%). But the conservative advantage is down to 15 percentage points as liberal identification edged up to its highest level since Gallup began regularly measuring ideology in the current format in 1992.The figures are based on combined data from 13 separate Gallup polls, including interviews with more than 18,000 Americans, conducted in 2013.When Gallup began asking about ideological identification in all its polls in 1992, an average 17% of Americans said they were liberal. That dipped to 16% in 1995 and 1996, but...

The latest information on job creation doesn’t paint a very optimistic picture. We’ll start with the sunnier metric, the weekly initial jobless claims report, which shows the number of claims dropping back into the pre-holiday range: In the week ending January 4, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 330,000, a decrease of 15,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 345,000. The 4-week moving average was 349,000, a decrease of 9,750 from the previous week’s revised average of 358,750.The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.2 percent for the week ending December 28, unchanged from the...

Forty-two percent of Americans, on average, identified as political independents in 2013, the highest Gallup has measured since it began conducting interviews by telephone 25 years ago. Meanwhile, Republican identification fell to 25%, the lowest over that time span. At 31%, Democratic identification is unchanged from the last four years but down from 36% in 2008. The results are based on more than 18,000 interviews with Americans from 13 separate Gallup multiple-day polls conducted in 2013. In each of the last three years, at least 40% of Americans have identified as independents. These are also the only years in Gallup's...

A recent Gallup poll refutes the claim made by Barack Obama on March 9, 2008 that “we are no longer a Christian nation.” Gallup found that three quarters of all Americans - a supermajority - identify themselves as Christians, with only five percent saying they are practicing members of a non-Christian faith. “We find, looking at our data, that America does in fact remain a predominantly Christian nation,” Dr. Frank Newport, Gallup’s editor in chief, said of the poll released on Christmas Eve. “Now, our overall estimation of what percent of Americans identify with the Christian religion depends a little...

PRINCETON, NJ -- For the sixth consecutive year, Barack Obama ranks as the Most Admired Man among Americans, and Hillary Clinton is again the Most Admired Woman. Both won by comfortable margins. Sixteen percent named Obama, compared with 4% each for former President George W. Bush and Pope Francis; Clinton (15%) finished ahead of television personality Oprah Winfrey (6%), first lady Michelle Obama (5%), and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (5%). Each year, Gallup asks Americans to name, in an open-ended format, the man and woman living anywhere in the world they admire most. This year's poll was conducted Dec....

Americans see the 2010 Affordable Care Act as President Barack Obama's greatest achievement to date as well as his biggest failure, underscoring the controversial nature of the law that is likely to define his legacy. On balance, more Americans name the healthcare law as his biggest failure (36%) than as his greatest achievement (22%). History's verdict on Obama's presidency will not be rendered for years or decades, if even then, given the continuing revision of a president's legacy that inevitably takes place after his term ends. But after he has spent almost five years in office, Americans are certainly in...

President Barack Obama's job approval rating averaged 41% in November, down 12 percentage points from 53% last December, his high-water mark since his first year in office. Hispanics' approval has dropped 23 points over the last 12 months, the most among major subgroups, and nearly twice the national average. His approval rating also showed above-average declines among low-income Americans, nonwhites, moderates, and moderates who identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party. [Snip] All major subgroups showed at least some decline over the past year in their views of the way Obama is handling his job as president. The subgroups...

If there’s one thing that feeds the ObamaCare beast, it’s young, healthy consumers — the same people who voted and worked to put Barack Obama in the White House twice. In order for the system to work, insurers need to get them into the system, paying exorbitant premiums for services they will likely never use, in order to keep prices down for older, less healthy Americans who not coincidentally tend to be more politically engaged. Gallup inadvertently tested that hypothesis and proved it its latest survey: Americans younger than 30, a key group targeted by the Affordable Care Act, continue...

It's a truism in politics that labels matter. When President Barack Obama and his Democratic allies in the Senate and House passed healthcare reform legislation in 2010, they developed an official name for the law that they thought would convey the positive benefits of the bill: "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act." That name has often been shortened to "Affordable Care Act" in the years since its passage, but the bill has also come to be known as "Obamacare," a name frequently used by Obama himself. Others simply call it the healthcare law. The political news site Politico called...