Poll Watch Daily

Now that GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum has stirred the pot on the issue of religion and politics by saying religion should play a greater role in public policy and criticizing President John. F. Kennedy’s 1960 declaration that the separation of church and state should be “absolute,” it’s interesting to look back at a Pew Research Center survey of voters about this subject that was conducted in 2010.

When it comes to whether churches and other houses of worship should engage in public policy, 52 percent of those surveyed said they should keep out of political matters while 43 percent favored these institutions expressing views on social and political questions. This was a turnaround from the 1990s and early 2000s, when as slight majority favored church involvement.

Opinion is different when it comes to what voters expect of their political candidates.

Sixty-one percent said it was important for members of Congress to have strong religious beliefs while 34 percent disagreed, with the rest undecided. Eighty-three percent of white Evangelicals, who are such an important part of the Republican base, said it was important that lawmakers have strong religious beliefs, and 76 percent of political conservatives agreed with them.

Thirty-seven percent of voters said there was too little expressions of faith by political leaders, but that view was arrayed against 29 percent who said there was too much and 24 percent who said the amount of that expression was about right. Fifty-six percent of white Evangelicals said there was too little expression of faith.

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One of the targets of Republicans going into the 2012 elections is government regulation that they say hurts businesses in the U.S. and is a drag on the economy. On that point, most Americans agree — in general, that is. But when it comes to specific areas of regulation, a new poll finds that they want to keep or even expand an array of current rules.

A Pew Research Center survey conducted Feb. 8-12 found that 52 percent believe government regulation of business usually does more harm than good compared to 40 percent who believe such regulation is necessary to protect the public interest.

But when asked about specific areas of regulation, the results tell a different story.

Fifty-three percent of Americans overall want to strengthen regulation of food production and packaging and another 36 percent want to keep the current regulations the same. There’s a big partisan gap on this and other regulations that Pew asked about. Sixty-three percent want to strengthen regulations governing the food industry compared to 44 percent of Republicans. Forty-three percent of Republicans want to keep the regulations as they are, compared to 29 percent of Democrats.

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A WBUR/MassInc poll released earlier this week had Democrat Elizabeth Warren with a razor-thin lead over first-term Republican Scott Brown in the Massachusetts Senate race, but a new Suffolk University/7News poll conducted Feb. 11-15 shows Brown leading Warren by 49 percent to 40 percent with the remainder undecided or preferring other options. The margin of error is 4 points. (Story; Poll data).

Forty-five percent of registered voters say Brown deserves to be re-elected while 39 percent want someone else to get a chance. Sixteen percent are undecided.

“Scott Brown’s popularity and appeal are overpowering the efforts of Elizabeth Warren, who struggles to introduce herself to the larger pool of Massachusetts voters,” said Suffolk’s David Paleologos. “Warren’s support does not have traction among independents.”

Pollster.com’s Mark Blumenthal suggested that the difference in point spread between the WBUR and Suffolk polls might be fue to the fact that question order of the Suffolk poll may have influenced the result in Brown’s favor.

Brown is seen favorably by 52 percent of those surveyed in this heavily Democratic state while 28 percent see him unfavorably, with the rest undecided. Warren is seen favorably by 35 percent and unfavorably by 28 percent, with the rest undecided.

When voters are asked for the first word or phrase that they associate with Brown, the top ones are “Republican,” “independent” and “fair/fair person.” For Warren, the top words are “intelligent,” “liberal” and “consumer advocate.” (Warren had helped the Obama administration create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau but didn’t have a chance to get the job because of fierce Republican opposition).

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The percentage of Americans who believe the economy is improving now outweighs those who say it is getting worse by a double-digit margin, according to a new New York Times/CBS News poll, and that is good news for President Obama’s re-election prospects.

Thirty-four percent of those surveyed in the poll conducted Feb. 8-13 said they thought the economy was getting better while 22 percent said it was getting worse. Forty-three percent said it was staying the same.

The number of those saying the economy was getting better passed the number of those saying it was getting worse in the Times/CBS News January poll, but that was by a single-digit 28 percent to 23 percent margin.

The same poll found Obama regaining the 50 percent mark when it came to the number of Americans who approved of the job he was doing. Obama’s approval ratings had been in the low to high 40s throughout 2011 except for May when he had a spike after the killing of Osama bin Laden.

The percentage of Americans who thought Obama had made progress in fixing the economy rose from 35 percent in January to 42 percent.

The poll also shows Obama leading all his potential GOP rivals by 6 points or more, with Romney being the closest.

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One of the Senate races that’s sure to be high on the list of most-watched contests is in Massachusetts where Democrats are hoping that Elizabeth Warren can retake the seat –  held by the late Ted Kennedy for almost 47 years — that first-term Republican Scott Brown won in an upset in 2010. Now, a new WBUR/Mass Inc poll conducted Feb. 6-9 shows the two are starting off in a real horse-race, with Warren leading Brown 46 percent to 43 percent, with 11 percent undecided. The margin of error is 3 points. (Story; Poll data).

Elizabeth Warren, Scott Brown. (Campaign photo, Senate office photo)

Despite the state’s deep Democratic roots, Brown is seen favorably by 50 percent of likely voters and unfavorably by only 29 percent. Fifteen percent are undecided and 6 percent never heard of him.

Warren, who helped the Obama administration create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau but didn’t have a chance to get the job because of fierce Republican opposition, is seen favorably by 39 percent and unfavorably by 29 percent. Fifteen percent are undecided and 14 percent have never heard of her, (this is her first run for elective office).

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Despite the rise of social media use and the increasing attention to it by political campaigns, a relative handful of Americans say they regularly get information about the presidential contest from Facebook or Twitter, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted Jan. 4-8.

Seventeen percent of Twitter users say they regularly learn about the campaign from Twitter and another 24 percent say they “sometimes” do. Eleven percent of people who use various of social networking sites say they regularly get campaign information from Facebook and 25 percent say they sometimes do. The figures predictably are higher for younger Americans.

When that’s carried over to the general public, with its large number of people who do not use social media, only 2 percent of all Americans regularly get campaign information from Twitter and 6 percent regularly get it from Facebook.

As far as ways that campaigns get their message out, traditional practices dominate. Seventy-two percent of those surveyed have seen or heard a 2012 presidential campaign commercial, with the next biggest vehicles being robo-calls (25 percent) and printed mail (21 percent). Only 6 percent say they have followed a candidate’s Facebook or Twitter feed. Just 3 percent say they had “friended” a candidate on a social media site.

So far, there has also been a falloff since 2008 in the number of younger Americans getting news online. Only 20 percent of those under 30 said that they had followed the campaign closely in January by turning to online sources, compared to 31 percent in January 2008. But that, in part, is a function of the fact that fewer young people are Republicans and, unlike 2008, there is no contest this year on the Democratic side.

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More Americans believe there is political bias in news coverage than they did four years ago, with that sentiment particularly high among tea party movement Republicans, according to a Pew Research Center poll conducted Jan. 4-8.

Thirty-seven percent of Americans overall say there is a “great deal” of political bias in news coverage up from 31 percent in December 2007 just before the last presidential election year. Another 30 percent currently believes there is a “fair amount” of bias.

Forty-nine percent of Republicans say there is a great deal of political bias in coverage compared to 32 percent of Democrats. When it comes to tea party Republicans, nearly three-quarters (74 percent) see political bias in news coverage.

These findings are part of a Pew report on where Americans get their campaign news that finds that cable news has held its own over the last four elections while local TV, network news, and local newspapers continue to suffer steep declines. The report also found relatively limited use of social media for getting campaign information, despite its rise in users for other purposes.

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Deportations of illegal immigrants have been rising to record levels during the Obama administration — even higher than they were during the Bush years — but while Latinos overwhelmingly disapprove of Obama’s deportation policies, Obama and the Democrats still have their strong support heading into the 2012 elections, according to a survey by the Pew Hispanic Center conducted Nov. 9-Dec. 7.

The Center said that Department of Homeland security figures showed that d deportations of immigrants reached nearly 400,000 a year during the Obama years, a figure 30 percent higher than the number of those eported annually on average during the second term of the Bush administration. The current level of deportations is nearly twice as many as the 200,000 deportations that occurred annually on average during Bush’s first term.

Fifty-nine percent of Latinos surveyed disapproved of the Obama administration deportation policy while 27 percent approved, with 12 percent expressing no opinion. Not all Latinos were aware that deportations under Obama have been running at a higher rate than under Bush; 41 percent said there were more under Obama, but 36 percent thought the number was about the same and 10 percent said there had been fewer deportations. Twelve percent didn’t know.

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Drawing on its survey data from 2007 and January 2008, the Pew Research Center has come up with a set of comparisons of the public mood on the eve of the 2008 campaign compared to what it is now as the nation enters the 2012 election year. The analysis is a sharp study in contrasts.

Pew’s bottom line is that at this point in time just before the 2008 elections, “public’s mood was not very good, but still a lot better than it is today.”

The country in December 2007 was in the first month of the recession, so an overwhelming majority of Americans (66 percent_ were unsurprisingly dissatisfied with national conditions, but that number has now gone up to 78 percent. Just over a quarter (27 percent) were satisfied with national conditions compared to 17 percent in the latest polling.

Seventy-three percent were satisfied with the state of the economy compared to 91 percent today. While about a quarter considered the state of the economy to be good or excellent in 2007, only 8 percent feel that way today.

The number of Americans who rated their personal finances as only fair or poor was 49 percent four years ago, and 61 percent today.

Dissatisfaction with government has become more acute. In 2007, 68 percent said they could trust government to do the right thing only sometimes or never, compared to 79 percent today. Americans who regarded Congress unfavorably increased from 51 percent to 70 percent and those who believed that most members of Congress should not be re-elected has increased from 49 percent to 67 percent.

President Obama’s approval ratings have been mired in the mid-40s since June, but the numbers were worse for George Bush, whose administration had grown increasingly unpopular before giving way to a Democratic tide in 2008. Sixty-one percent disapproved of the job he was doing.

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Discontent among Americans about what they consider a do-nothing Congress is running as high as it was in 2010 when 58 members of Congress lost their seats, and Republicans could end up paying a higher price for it than Democrats, according to a Pew Research Center poll conducted Dec. 7-11.

The new poll echoes a Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey earlier this week as well as a previous Pew poll of congressional districts represented by House Tea Party Caucus members that show the movement, as well as Republicans as a whole, losing support.

About two-thirds of voters (67 percent) do not want to see most members of Congress re-elected compared to 53 percent in February 2010. A third don’t want to see their own lawmaker re-elected, a notch higher than the 31 percent who expressed that view in 2010.

Forty-three percent of independents, 28 percent of Republicans and 25 percent of Democrats said they didn’t want to see their own representative re-elected to the House.

A record high 50 percent of Americans say the current Congress has accomplished less than the others. The previous high of 43 percent was in October 2007 when the Democrats were in control.

Fifty-five percent of the overall public agreed with the statement “the political system can work fine, it’s the members that are the problem.” That view was shared by a majority of Republicans, Democrats and independents.

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