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John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, as well Valerie Jarrett and Barack Obama, should take heed. By a commanding 17 point margin, Americans want Congress to take the lead, according to a new Gallup Poll (hat tip: Bloomberg and Instapundit): Following the midterm election that some have termed a Republican wave, the majority of Americans want the Republicans in Congress -- rather than President Barack Obama -- to have more influence over the direction the country takes in the coming year. This is a switch from early 2012 when a slim plurality, 46%, wanted Obama to prevail in steering the nation....

Less than half of Americans, 47%, say they favor stricter laws covering the sale of firearms, similar to views found last year. But this percentage is significantly below the 58% recorded in 2012 after the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, spurred a nationwide debate about the possibility of more stringent gun control laws. Thirty-eight percent of Americans say these laws should be kept as they are now, and 14% say they should be made less strict.

As the quarantine period ends for people exposed to the first person in the U.S. to be diagnosed with Ebola, the virus for the first time ranks among the top 10 issues Americans consider to be the most important ones facing the country. However, Ebola still ranks behind five other issues, including the economy (17%), dissatisfaction with government (16%) and unemployment (10%), and ties several others.These results come from an Oct. 12-15 Gallup poll, conducted while dozens of people in the U.S. were still being quarantined after coming in contact with Thomas Eric Duncan, who died earlier this month from...

The world's 7 billion citizens get most of their news from reporters and experts -- it's edited and filtered by how these professionals see events. Gallup applauds the work they do. But the one missing element from most reporting and analyses are the opinions, thoughts, and feelings of those 7 billion citizens themselves -- how they see events. This week we are relaunching our e-newspaper, Gallup.com, to broaden and deepen our coverage of the opinions, thoughts, and well-being of citizens around the world -- the will of the people. So while the news media continues to cover events from the...

39% approve - 1% 56% disapprove +1%

The leaders on Capitol Hill have long been unpopular with voters nationwide, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s favorability rating has taken a steep plunge this election year, showed a new poll released Monday. The Galup poll found that the favorability score for Mr. Reid, Nevada Democrat, dropped from 27 percent in April to 21 percent today. “Reid’s image has consistently tilted negative since he emerged as a nationally known figure in 2008.

Angry and frustrated voters are planning to use the midterm elections in one month to tell President Obama they oppose his agenda, the highest “no vote” percentage in the last 16 years measured by Gallup. The polling outfit found that 32 percent of voters want to send a message of opposition with their vote, compared to just 20 percent who are sending a signal of support. That is 13 points higher than in 1998 when former President Clinton was headed to impeachment for lying about his sex affair with a former White House intern and even a smidge higher -

A new Gallup poll out this morning, September 24, 2014, found that 58% of Americans strongly want a third political party choice in the candidates because the two older parties "do such a poor job" representing the people. This number is little changed from a Gallup poll asking the same question in 2007. The third largest political party is the Libertarian Party, yet its candidates face unfair hurdles of ballot access and media exclusion. Many states in the nation purposely raise the bar for Libertarian Party candidates to have their name printed on the ballot alongside the Republican and Democratic...

Seven weeks to go until the mid term elections in November and there us further evidence that the Democrats are in deep trouble.Gallup released its "Governance Poll" yesterday and it showed a whopping 23 point lead for Republicans as the party best able to keep the country safe. Perhaps more relevant to the elections, Republicans hold a nine point lead over Democrats as the party best able to keep America prosperous. The nuimber represents almost exactly the same margin held by the GOP in the lead up to the wave election of 2010. The Republican Party has expanded its historical...

Earlier I posted about the new poll from Gallup where the Republicans wallop the Democrats when it comes to keeping America safe. Buried in that poll was this other nugget: “Looking ahead for the next few years, which political party do you think will keep the country prosperous." Results: Republicans 49%, Democrats 40%. And how will this impact the mid terms, exactly? Well, it "does not bode well for Democratic chances," says Gallup. While these measures are by no means perfect predictors of how well a party will do in a midterm election year, the Republican Party's strength this year...

A nifty catch by Josh Jordan, a.k.a. NumbersMuncher. Albeit with a big caveat.When I say “lowest level since last year” in the headline, I don’t mean to imply that O’s numbers with Latinos were lower in 2013. All I mean is that today’s Gallup chart goes back only as far as last November. (A period that includes the disastrous ObamaCare rollout, do note.) That 44 percent may well be the lowest number of his entire presidency among Latinos. I’d say odds are good, at least, that it’s the lowest since the big debt-ceiling standoff in 2011, when Obama saw...

That 44 percent may well be the lowest number of his entire presidency among Latinos. I’d say odds are good, at least, that it’s the lowest since the big debt-ceiling standoff in 2011, when Obama saw some of his worst polling across the board. And it’s not just Latinos who are sour on him right now. Click and scroll left and you’ll find that he hasn’t been below 60 percent among nonwhite voters once since last November. Until now.

Within a few days, the Gallup Poll and the Battleground Poll provided more polling data that demonstrates just how much conservatives outnumber liberals in America. The Gallup Poll, in its August 26 “State by State: Key Metrics for 2014,” provided data that reveals that in all but three states – Hawaii, Vermont, and Massachusetts – conservatives outnumber liberals. This is consistent with all prior Gallup Poll results for many years. In a few of these polls, conservatives have outnumbered liberals in every state of the nation, and in a few of these polls, liberals outnumber conservatives in one or two...

Obama at 38% approval // 54% Disapproval - Lowest Approval of his presidency.

According to Gallup's daily tracking poll of President Obama's approval rating, the president lost 5 whole points overnight and for the first time since July, his job approval rating is back on the 30's. Tuesday, Obama stood at 42% approval, 52% disapproval. Wednesday the numbers sit at 39-54%. The president is 15 points underwater.

Americans are more than twice as likely to say they "strongly disapprove" (39%) of President Barack Obama's job performance as they are to say they "strongly approve" (17%). The percentage of Americans who strongly disapprove of Obama has increased over time, while the percentage who strongly approve has dropped by almost half.

Gallup tracks daily the percentage of Americans who approve or disapprove of the job Barack Obama is doing...

President Obama's approval rating declined this week by three points to 39 percent, down from its previous posting of 42 percent, according to the latest Gallup polling data. The new data, which Gallup collects daily and has a margin of error of plus of minus 3 percentage points, reflects how American voters feel about the job Obama is doing in the White House. The decline in approval comes at a time when the White House has fumbled its response to the growing crisis on the border, Russia's provocations in the east and the increasingly violent civil war in Iraq. Of...

First, the reassuring news: Americans’ pro-Israel sentiments remain near an all-time high, according to Pew’s latest numbers, and CNN measures public support for Israel’s recent actions against Hamas at a robust (57/43). Gallup’s latest nationwide survey, however, shows a much closer split on the righteousness of Israel’s defensive military campaign — although only a fractional minority is willing to defend Hamas’ terror campaign: According to Gallup’s internals, self-identifying Republicans are the primary reason Israel’s actions attract plurality support in this poll. GOP-leaners back Israel’s actions by a whopping 44-point margin; the numbers turn upside-down among independents (-10), and especially...

A Gallup poll released Friday shows that President Barack Obama enjoys the highest approval rating from Muslims among religious groups. Mormons are the least supportive of Obama. The poll, which asked how Obama was doing during the first six months of 2014, found that 72 percent of U.S. Muslims approve of the job he is doing, while 20 percent disapprove. Among "other non-Christians," 59 percent approved of Obama's job performance, 55 percent of "Jewish" adults expressed approval, and 54 percent of those under the "No religion/theist" category said they approve. Roman Catholics had a 44 percent approval and 51 percent...