Free Republic

Americans remain shaky on the details of climate science even as they have grown increasingly concerned about human activity warming the Earth, according to a national poll by The Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) that probed the public’s understanding of climate change. The rising alarm is one of the poll’s most dramatic findings. In just five years, the percentage of people calling climate change a “crisis” has jumped from 23 percent to 38 percent. More than 3 in 4 U.S. adults and teenagers alike agree that humans are influencing the climate. The overwhelming majority of them said...

By a wide margin, more Americans blame President Trump and Republicans in Congress than congressional Democrats for the now record-breaking government shutdown, and most reject the president’s assertion that there is an illegal-immigration crisis on the southern border, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll. Support for building a wall on the border, which is the principal sticking point in the stalemate between the president and Democrats, has increased over the past year. Today, 42 percent say they support a wall, up from 34 percent last January. A slight majority of Americans (54 percent) oppose the idea, down from 63...

President Trump’s disapproval rating has hit a high point of 60 percent, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll that also finds that clear majorities of Americans support the special counsel’s Russia investigation and say the president should not fire Attorney General Jeff Sessions. At the dawn of the fall campaign sprint to the midterm elections, which will determine whether Democrats retake control of Congress, the poll finds a majority of the public has turned against Trump and is on guard against his efforts to influence the Justice Department and special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s wide-ranging probe. Nearly...

Strong headwinds of unpopularity continue to hobble leading Republicans Donald Trump and Ted Cruz with the public at-large, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. By contrast, most Republicans see Trump and Cruz in a favorable light - 56 and 58 percent, respectively - while John Kasich is less popular among fellow partisans (47 percent) despite receiving the best ratings among the broader electorate. The poll finds Trump suffering little damage from recent controversies over punishments for women who have abortions and the arrest of his campaign manager, though the real-estate mogul’s ratings are still in the doldrums. Thirty-one...

Among many other topics, respondents were asked whether they were struggling economically — or whether they were comfortable and moving up. They were also asked whether they thought it was more of a problem that African-Americans and Latinos are "losing out because of preferences for whites" or whether whites are "losing out because of preferences for blacks and Hispanics." The survey asked this question in order to gauge the sentiment that racial and ethnic groups don't just feel they are facing difficulties in general, but that those losses are being caused by other group's gains.

By a nearly 2 to 1 margin, Americans support the notion of striking a deal with Iran that restricts the nation’s nuclear program in exchange for loosening sanctions, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds. But the survey — released hours before Tuesday’s negotiating deadline — also finds few Americans are hopeful that such an agreement will be effective. Nearly six in 10 say they are not confident that a deal will prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, unchanged from 15 months ago, when the United States, France, Britain, Germany, China and Russia reached an interim agreement with Iran aimed...

The 2016 Republican presidential nominating battle is shaping up as the most wide-open in a generation, with a new Washington Post-ABC News poll showing five prospective candidates within four percentage points of one another at the top and a half-dozen more in the mix. The picture is very different on the Democratic side, where former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton is the clear front-runner. In a hypothetical matchup, Clinton leads former Florida governor Jeb Bush — seen by many GOP establishment figures as the party’s strongest general-election candidate — 53 percent to 41 percent. Clinton’s commanding position is fueled...

Meet the haters. We’re talking about the voters who’ve had it with all Washington politicians: President Obama, congressional Republicans and congressional Democrats. Despite their distaste for, well, everyone, when push comes to shove, these voters are lining up squarely behind GOP candidates for Congress. It’s encouraging news for a Republican Party eyeing midterm elections now only about 11 months away. Why? Because it suggests the image problems the party’s congressional members have experienced — which have been worse than those suffered by Obama or congressional Democrats — don’t translate to a death knell at the ballot box. Seventy-two percent of...