Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World

Politics

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    Clinton Controversy Heavily Covered but Obama Maintains Visibility Edge

    Summary of Findings Hillary Clinton’s retraction of her claim that she came under sniper fire while visiting Bosnia in 1996 was one of the main campaign storylines last week. But the controversy over her statements did not resonate as widely as the furor over statements made by Barack Obama’s pastor earlier in March. Roughly four-in-ten […]

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    Obama and Wright Controversy Dominate News Cycle

    Summary of Findings Barack Obama’s March 18th speech on race and politics is arguably the biggest political event of the campaign so far. Fully 85% of Americans say they heard at least a little about Obama’s speech, and most (54%) say they heard a lot about it. Not surprisingly, Barack Obama has been far and […]

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    Obama Weathers the Wright Storm, Clinton Faces Credibility Problem.

    Summary of Findings The videos of Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s controversial sermons and Barack Obama’s subsequent speech on race and politics have attracted more public attention than any events thus far in the 2008 presidential campaign. A majority of the public (51%) said they heard “a lot” about the videos, and an even larger percentage (54%) […]

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    Most Aware of Ferraro’s Comments, Wright Videos

    Summary of Findings On the eve of Barack Obama’s major speech on race and politics, most Americans said they had heard at least a little about the videos showing the Rev. Jeremiah Wright making racially-charged statements to his Chicago congregation. At the time of the survey, however, there was greater public awareness of other recent […]

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    Fewer Voters Identify as Republicans

    The balance of party identification in the American electorate now favors the Democratic Party by a decidedly larger margin than in either of the two previous presidential election cycles. In 5,566 interviews with registered voters conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press during the first two months of 2008, 36% […]

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    Public Continues to Fault Government for Troop Care

    Summary of Findings A year after the problems at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and other military hospitals made major news, the public remains highly critical of the government’s performance in supporting and caring for soldiers who have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan. Fully 72% say the government does not give enough support to soldiers […]

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    Public Attitudes Toward the War in Iraq: 2003-2008

    Five years after the start of the conflict in Iraq, many public evaluations of the situation in Iraq have turned more positive. But there has been no turnaround in the public’s opinion about the original decision to take military action in Iraq. While ratings of how things are going in Iraq have improved over the […]