Partisanship & Issues

With the public growing more anxious about the economy and concerned about overseas commitments, Barack Obama’s job rating has edged lower. About as many now approve (47%) as disapprove (45%) of the way Obama is handling his job as president. In March, opinions about Obama’s job performance were more positive; 51% approved of his job […]

Senior research staff answer questions from readers relating to all the areas covered by our seven projects, ranging from polling techniques and findings, to media, technology, religious, demographic and global attitudes trends.

Across a wide range of issues -- including entitlements, education, agriculture and energy -- Tea Party Republicans take a much harder line on cutting federal spending than do non-Tea Party Republicans, who are far more in sync with Democrats.

The public’s views about federal spending are beginning to change. Across a range of federal programs, Americans are no longer calling for increased spending, as they have for many years. For the most part, however, there is not a great deal of support for cutting spending, though in a few cases support for reductions has […]

The politics behind the 112th Congress led the online conversation last week as bloggers jousted over the mandate and implications of a GOP-led House. On Twitter, the announcement that Apple was now the second-most valuable company in the world was the No. 1 subject. And on YouTube, an excerpt from a BBC show demonstrated just how endearing polar bears can be.

Overview With the public giving subpar approval ratings to President Obama and continuing to express negative views of Congress and the political parties, it goes its own way on many of the remaining issues before the lame-duck Congress. In a survey conducted before Obama and GOP leaders agreed to temporarily extend all Bush-era tax cuts, […]

In today’s news landscape, both mainstream and new media sources shape the narrative. A new PEJ study finds that no single unified message reverberated throughout the media universe in the wake of the November 2 voting and what one learned depended largely on where one got the news.  How did the post election-day narrative differ from the front pages to the television studies and from bloggers to Twitterers?

Tuesday’s midterm elections were historic for Hispanics. For the first time ever, three Latino candidates—all of them Republicans—won top statewide offices.

A majority of Americans say the earth is warming, but far fewer than said so in 2006. The decline has come mostly from Republicans, and very few Tea Party supporters say there is solid evidence of global warming. Also, the public is divided on the question of whether scientists themselves agree that the earth is warming.