Political Issues

Most Americans support building the Keystone XL pipeline and increasing energy production from traditional sources. Yet the public also favors stricter greenhouse gas emission limits for power plants and is more opposed to fracking and nuclear power.

U.S. domestic energy production is rising -- up 13.9% from 2005 to 2012, and on track to rise even more this year.

Overview Most Americans (65%) continue to favor building the Keystone XL pipeline, perhaps the most politically contentious energy issue in Barack Obama’s second term. Yet when it comes to another issue making headlines – a proposal to tighten greenhouse gas emissions from power plants – the public favors stricter limits, by exactly the same margin […]

Nearly seven-in-ten Americans say large banks and financial institutions have benefited the most from post-recession government policies.

Three-quarters of U.S. Catholics say the church should permit birth control, about half favor same-sex marriage and just a third (33%) say homosexual behavior is a sin.

This week, House Speaker John Boehner agreed to tie funding of the government to defunding Obamacare, as conservative members of his caucus have demanded. This proposal may be unlikely to survive the Democratic-controlled Senate, not to mention the president’s veto pen, but recent Pew Research Center surveys show that it is clearly in step with […]

Almost six-in-ten uninsured Americans live in states that haven't set up their own health-insurance exchanges under the Affordable Care Act.

Survey Report As Ben Bernanke prepares to step down as chairman of the Federal Reserve in January, the public views him somewhat more favorably (38%) than unfavorably (31%), with 32% unable to offer a rating. Bernanke is better known now than he was in March 2008, when 55% could not rate him; at that time, […]

This past weekend, for the first time in its history, the Miss America pageant crowned an Indian American as the winner. The announcement was followed by a barrage of tweets disparaging the beauty queen’s ethnic heritage and questioning whether her Indian background makes her less “American.” The new Miss America is 24-year-old Nina Davuluri of […]