Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer outside the U.S. Capitol on July 29, 2020. (Brendan Smialowski-Pool/Getty Images)
As the Senate holds confirmation hearings for Amy Coney Barrett, President Donald Trump’s pick for the Supreme Court, voters express more negative than positive views of the chamber’s top leaders, Republican Mitch McConnell and Democrat Chuck Schumer.
In a new survey, fewer than a quarter of registered voters express “warm” or positive views of McConnell, the Senate majority leader. When asked to rate the two senators on a “feeling thermometer” – in which 100 represents the warmest rating and 0 the coldest – 23% of voters say they feel very or somewhat warmly toward McConnell. Just 13% give him a very warm rating of 76 or more on the scale.
In recent years there has been renewed interest in the debate over journalists’ use of anonymous sources, and this has included criticism directly from President Donald Trump. Survey data from earlier this year shows that most Americans see a place for journalists to use anonymous sources, but few think journalists should have carte blanche to use them when reporting the news.
A majority of U.S. adults (82%) say that there are times when it is acceptable for journalists to use anonymous sources, with 67% saying it is acceptable only in special cases – a view which echoes the standards of professional journalism organizations that say journalists should take every step to attribute information to a named source when possible before relying on an anonymous source. A much smaller share – 15% – thinks use of anonymous sources is always acceptable. About two-in-ten Americans (18%) think it is never acceptable.
These findings come from a Pew Research Center survey conducted Feb. 18 to March 2, 2020, around the time that there was continued interest and debate about the anonymous author who penned a 2018 New York Times op-ed and a subsequent book in 2019 that criticized Trump and who claimed to be an administration official.
Americans are divided on whether offensive content online is taken seriously enough and on which is more important online: free speech or feeling safe. Republicans and Democrats have grown further apart when it comes to these issues since 2017.
Overall, 55% of Americans say many people take offensive content they see online too seriously, while a smaller share (42%) say offensive content online is too often excused as not a big deal, according to a new Pew Research Center survey of U.S. adults conducted in early September 2020. In addition, about half of Americans (53%) say it’s more important for people to be able to feel welcome and safe online, compared with 45% who believe it’s more important for people to be able to speak their minds freely online, according to an earlier Center survey fielded in July 2020.
Harris waves to supporters in Milwaukee on Sept. 7; Pence at a rally in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on Feb. 20. (Kerem Yucel/AFP via Getty Images; Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images)
As they prepare to meet in a vice-presidential debate on Oct. 7, both Republican Mike Pence and Democrat Kamala Harris elicit more negative than positive feelings from registered voters, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.
Around half of registered voters (51%) give Pence “cold” ratings, while slightly more than a third (36%) give him “warm” ratings and 12% have neutral feelings.
For Harris, 48% express cold feelings, 39% have warm feelings and 13% give her neutral ratings, according to the Sept. 30-Oct. 5 survey of 11,929 adults, including 10,543 registered voters.
Voters cast ballots early at the registration and elections office in Columbia, South Carolina, on Oct. 6, 2020. (Sean Rayford/Getty Images)
With about a month until Election Day and early voting already underway, many Americans are approaching the presidential election with a sense of uncertainty that goes beyond their traditional concerns over whether their candidate will come out on top. These worries predate President Donald Trump’s recent comments suggesting that, because of the potential for problems with voting by mail, the election will be so flawed that he may not relinquish his office.
And this uncertainty existed before the disclosure that Trump had contracted COVID-19, as have other White House staff.
It is difficult to recall an election in which the public has had such a wide array of concerns about the election process and its outcome.
In a survey conducted in late summer, three-quarters of Americans said it is likely that Russia or other foreign governments will attempt to influence the presidential election. Earlier this year, two-thirds (67%) said it was very or somewhat likely that the coronavirus outbreak would significantly disrupt Americans’ ability to vote in November.
As Election Day nears, a majority of registered voters in the United States say climate change will be a very (42%) or somewhat (26%) important issue in making their decision about whom to vote for in the presidential election, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted July 27-Aug. 2.
Registered voters supporting Democratic candidate Joe Biden and Republican President Donald Trump have very different perspectives on the issue. Nearly seven-in-ten Biden voters (68%) say climate change is very important to their vote. By contrast, only 11% of Trump supporters say the same. In fact, climate change ranks last in importance (out of 12 issues tested in a recent survey) for Trump supporters.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump at a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Osaka in June 2019. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)
Negative views of the United States and China have soared in many countries over the past year. In most of 14 advanced economies surveyed between June and August 2020, unfavorable views of both countries are at or near historic highs in Pew Research Center’s decade or more of polling on the issue.
Few in the countries surveyed have confidence in the leader of either the U.S. or China, and many are critical of how both countries have handled the coronavirus outbreak. On most measures included in the survey, people are even more critical of the U.S. than of China – though more still have favorable opinions of the U.S.
Here are four key findings comparing the two countries’ global image.
A woman casts her ballot at a polling station in Soweto in April 1994 for South Africa’s first free and democratic general election. (Brooks Kraft LLC/Sygma via Getty Images)
This year marks the centennial of the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which guarantees women the right to vote. But the United States was hardly the first country to codify women’s suffrage, and barriers to vote persisted for some groups of U.S. women for decades. At least 20 nations preceded the U.S., according to a Pew Research Center analysis of women’s enfranchisement measures in 198 countries and self-administering territories. Today, none of these 198 countries and territories bar women from voting because of their sex; some countries do not hold national elections.
Here is a closer look at the history of women’s suffrage around the world. This analysis focuses on when women in each country won the right to vote in national elections, not regional or local elections.
For the second time in four years, the U.S. Supreme Court will begin its term on Monday with only eight of nine justices, following the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg in mid-September. The high court last carried out its duties with eight justices after the death of Antonin Scalia in 2016.
As it did four years ago, the death of a sitting justice has thrust the court into the center of a bruising political campaign for the White House. Republican President Donald Trump has nominated federal appellate judge Amy Coney Barrett to fill the vacancy left by Ginsburg, even as Trump’s opponent, Democrat Joe Biden, calls for confirmation proceedings to be postponed until after voters have cast their ballots for president. Republicans control the U.S. Senate and have vowed to move forward with Barrett’s confirmation over the objections of Biden and other Democrats.
As the high court gets back to work and hears arguments in a new set of cases – including one that seeks to invalidate the 2010 Affordable Care Act – here are five facts about the Supreme Court, based on surveys and other recent analyses by Pew Research Center:
Unlike other Hispanic registered voters in the United States, most Cuban Americans identify as Republican – a pattern that could have electoral implications as President Donald Trump seeks to recapture the important swing state of Florida this year.
Nationwide, 58% of Cuban registered voters say they affiliate with or lean toward the Republican Party, while 38% identify with the Democratic Party or lean Democratic, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted July 27-Aug. 2. By comparison, around two-thirds of Hispanic voters who are not Cuban (65%) identify as or lean Democratic, while 32% affiliate with the Republican Party.
Historically, Cuban Americans have backed the Republican Party in large numbers, but that support has at times softened as a new generation of U.S.-born, Democratic-leaning Cubans has come of age. In 2013, similar shares of Cuban registered voters identified with the Republican Party (47%) and the Democratic Party (44%). That same year, 60% of non-Cuban Hispanic voters identified as Democratic and 28% as Republican.
