Free Republic

PPP's newest Colorado poll finds that the Senate race remains very competitive, although not that much closer with Cory Gardner in the race than it was with Ken Buck. Our last poll of the state, in early December, found Mark Udall leading Buck by 4 points. Udall starts out with a 2 point lead over Cory Gardner at 42/40. Gardner starts out the race with just under 50% name recognition, and voters with an opinion about him are pretty evenly divided. The close division mirrors how voters feel about Udall's job performance- 41% approve and 40% disapprove of him, almost...

CVS Caremark is kicking the habit of selling tobacco products at its more than 7,600 drugstores nationwide as it focuses more on providing health care. The nation's second-largest drugstore chain said Wednesday that it will phase out cigarettes, cigars and chewing tobacco by Oct. 1, a move that will cost about $2 billion in annual revenue but won't affect its 2014 earnings forecast. CVS Caremark leaders say removing tobacco will help them grow the company's business of working with doctors, hospitals and other care providers to improve customers' health.

PPP’s newest national survey finds that in the wake of the shutdown, Republican voters now view Ted Cruz as their party’s leader. 21% picked Cruz to 17% for Chris Christie, and 15% for John Boehner. Cruz finished well ahead of the other GOP Senators we tested- Rand Paul got 9%, John McCain 7%, and Mitch McConnell only 4%. Mitt Romney at 8% and Sarah Palin at 4% were the other people we tested. Numbers PPP will release next week show Ted Cruz would be an exceedingly weak Presidential candidate in the general election. The good news for the GOP is...

Public Policy Polling is the latest to take the temperature of 2013′s only competitive gubernatorial race, and by their measure, Democrat Terry McAuliffe currently has a four-point lead over Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, via Politico: The survey by Democratic firm Public Policy Polling has McAuliffe at 41 percent, compared with 37 percent for Cuccinelli and 7 percent for libertarian candidate Robert Sarvis. Fifteen percent said they’re undecided.McAuliffe also leads among self-described independents, 40 percent to 33 percent. Twenty percent of independents are undecided.The poll, shared early with POLITICO, also finds both McAuliffe and Cuccinelli with underwater favorability ratings: 32 percent...

PPP's final poll of the special election in South Carolina's 1st Congressional District finds a race that's too close to call, with Republican Mark Sanford leading Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch 47-46. The 1 point lead for Sanford represents a 10 point reversal from PPP's poll of the race two weeks ago, when Colbert Busch led by 9 points at 50-41. Sanford has gotten back into the race by nationalizing it and painting Colbert Busch as a liberal. A plurality of voters in the district- 47%- say they think Colbert Busch is a liberal compared to 43% who characterize her as...

Sen. Mark Begich, a Democrat in Republican-leaning Alaska, is sure to be targeted by Republicans in 2014, his seat a “must” pickup if the GOP hopes to retake control of Congress’ upper chamber. But Begich is showing surprising strength and popularity, according to a new survey of the 49th State by Public Policy Polling. He has a 49 percent job approval rating, with only 39 percent disapproving of the job he’s doing. And Begich leads a bevy of likely Republican challengers. Sarah Palin Sarah Palin: The Tea Party loves her, but approval ratings have plummeted back in Alaska. He has...

New PPP polls both nationally and in Iowa find Marco Rubio and Hillary Clinton leading the way for their party's respective 2016 nominations, with Clinton leading Rubio by 8 points in a hypothetical head to head.For the third month in a row in our national 2016 GOP tracking Rubio leads the way. He's at 22% to 15% for Paul Ryan, 13% each for Jeb Bush and Chris Christie, 11% for Mike Huckabee, 10% for Rand Paul, 4% for Bobby Jindal, 3% for Rick Perry, and 1% for Susana Martinez. Rubio continues to lead based on his appeal to the...

Fox News Channel is the most trusted—and the least trusted—news network in the nation, according to a new survey, illustrating the divisive and partisan nature of politics across the nation at the moment. … Fox News, known for being the only major network that doesn’t have a liberal slant, was both the “least trusted” and “most trusted” among those polled by Public Policy Polling in its annual “TV News Trust Poll.” … The contradictory findings, which polled 800 people, were the result of two separate questions. In the first poll question, participants were given a list of networks, including Fox...

PPP's final polls in Ohio and Virginia find Barack Obama ahead in both states, 52/47 in Ohio and 51/47 in Virginia. PPP has conducted four polls in each of these states over the last three weeks and has found an average lead of 3.75 points for Obama in Ohio and an average advantage of 3.5 points for him in Virginia. In Ohio Obama's already built up a large lead during the early voting period. He's up 60/39 with those who already cast their ballots. Romney's ahead 51/48 with people who plan to vote on election day but he's going to...

Public Policy Polling says Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill hold a narrow 4-point lead over Rep. Todd Akin in the 2012 campaign's closing days. She's at 48%, Akin at 44% in a poll of 835 likely voters Nov. 2 and Nov. 3. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.4%.

I saw this poll late last night, long after getting back from walking with my granddaughters on Halloween, trick or treating in their neighborhood. At first, I thought this new poll from PPP in Virginia was a trick, but by this morning, I considered it more of a treat: A new Public Policy Polling survey in Virginia, conducted on behalf of Health Care for America Now, finds Barack Obama leading Mitt Romney 49-46. PPP has conducted 5 Virginia polls during the month of October and found Obama leading in every single one, by an average margin of 2.8 points.Key findings...

No wonder David Axelrod thinks that Barack Obama can win Ohio without winning independents. According to the latest Buckeye State poll from PPP, they only need an extra five points from non-Democrats to get a majority: **** A new Public Policy Polling survey in Ohio, conducted on behalf of Health Care for America Now, finds Barack Obama leading Mitt Romney 50-45. **** Oh, let’s just skip the rest of the preliminaries and go right to the sample. The D/R/I on this poll is a ridiculous 45/36/19 that assumes Democrats will add six points to their 2008 turnout while independents largely...

Mitt Romney leads President Barack Obama by a single point in today's Public Policy Polling daily tracking survey, but the numbers inside the poll display a clearly worse picture for the president. Romney's one-point lead is a slight increase from Saturday, when the candidates were tied. But a deep dive into the numbers paint the picture of a president whose approval is on the decline and is struggling to pick up votes with Independents. Consider the following numbers: * Obama's approval-to-disapproval rating sits at just 44-52, which is actually worse than Gallup's tracking on Saturday. * Obama is losing the...

PPP (D) National Tracking Poll: R 49%, 0 48% - 0 job approval at 44%!!

President Obama leads Mitt Romney in the critical battleground state of Virginia, according to a survey released Thursday from Public Policy Polling. Obama takes 51 percent support over Romney at 46. The survey was conducted on the Tuesday and Wednesday following Monday’s third and final presidential debate. Obama led the same poll from last weekend, 49-47, over Romney. The poll could be an outlier — according to the RealClearPolitics average of polls, Obama and Romney are tied at 48 in Virginia. Obama is buoyed in the poll by a wide gender gap. Women favored Obama 57-41 over Romney, while men...

The left-leaning Public Policy Polling does regular weekly polling for the extreme left-leaning Daily Kos and SEIU, and the numbers this morning have probably stopped the hearts of leftists everywhere. Nationally, the poll shows Romney up four, 50-46%. In the swing states, the news is just as bad with Romney up three, 50-47%. In this particular poll, the movement towards Romney nationally is a net gain of two points. In the swing states, Romney overcame a four-point deficit. Two weeks ago he was losing to Obama, 50-46%. That's a seven-point shift. Daily Kos released the daily numbers in this three-day...

That same poll shows Romney up by five among independents. And yet this poll has a D+4 sample. That might be a little high, but it's not as outrageous as some of the others. So how is this possible? Because to me, the numbers don't add up. Does this have something to do with the early Ohio voting that shows Obama ahead 2-1? Yet, I've also read that Romney leads by five or six among likely voters. And how does all this jibe with the early voting turnout numbers we've seen on this board = that show a depressed Dem...

PPP, a Democratic polling outfit, has long been viewed by suspicion by not only conservatives but by independent, credible pollsters. Now there is all the more reason to discount its “polling” as shoddy partisanship. I spoke by phone today with Wisconsin voter Dave Summers, who lives in the Madison area. He told me, “I got a survey. I don’t normally answer these calls, but I did [this time]. I started out pretty normal — President, Senate.” However, he said it then got weirder. The automatic survey asked if he had a favorable or unfavorable impression of Sean Hannity and Tucker...

PPP's newest Virginia poll finds Barack Obama leading by 5 points, 51- 46. Obama's lead is unchanged from a month ago when we found him leading 50-45 in the state. He may not be seeing a bump from the convention in the state at this point, but he was in a pretty good position to begin with. Virginia continues to look like it may be something of a firewall state for Obama. PPP has now polled it 9 times this cycle, and President Obama has led by at least 4 points on all 9 of the polls. He's been ahead...

At one minute past midnight on Sept. 16, a state landmark known by millions of motorists will go dark. Employees will say their goodbyes before the doors and off-ramps are barricaded at Maryland House, the Interstate 95 travel plaza in Harford County that opened in 1963. Within weeks, wrecking crews will level the neo-Georgian brick structure to make way for a new building, the flagship of an ambitious public-private partnership valued at a half-billion dollars. The same night, the smaller Chesapeake House in Cecil County will change as new vendors replace old ones. In a year, it too will come...