Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World

Politics

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    Tuberculosis Story: Lots of Coverage, Lots of Interest

    Summary of Findings News about an Atlanta man infected with a dangerous form of tuberculosis drew a large audience last week. The saga of the man’s illness and his travels abroad was the second most closely followed news story of the week – trailing only the situation in Iraq. Nearly a quarter of the public […]

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    Public Wants to Know More about Darfur and Many Favor U.S. Involvement

    As world leaders gather in Germany for the annual G-8 meeting, the humanitarian crisis in Darfur will be high on their agenda. Pew’s latest surveys find nearly half of Americans believing the United States has a moral obligation to do something about the ethnic genocide there, and a modest plurality thinking the U.S. should send […]

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    Thompson Demonstrates Broad Potential Appeal

    Summary of Findings Former Sen. Fred Thompson has broad potential appeal among Republican voters even before his expected entrance into the presidential race. Thompson is not nearly as well known as former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani or the other leading GOP candidates. But 37% of the Republican and Republican-leaning voters who have heard […]

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    Political Divide in Views of Campaign Coverage

    Summary of Findings At this early stage of the 2008 campaign, about half of the public believes that press coverage of the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates has been fair. But there are sizable partisan differences in evaluations of campaign coverage. Notably, a plurality of Republicans believes the press has gone too easy on Democratic […]

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    Gas Prices Top News Interest

    Summary of Findings The rising price of gasoline replaced the Iraq war last week as the public’s most closely followed news story. More than half of the public (52%) paid very close attention to news about gas prices, and 27% said this was the single news story they followed more closely than any other. By […]

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    Baker-Hamilton Redux

    Four months after the bipartisan Iraq Study Group proposed a number of new policy options for dealing with the Iraq conflict, these proposals remain broadly popular with the public. Read full analysis at Pewresearch.org

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    Iraq Dominates News Interest

    Summary of Findings While the national media divided its time last week among a host of major news stories, the public remained intensely focused on the situation in Iraq. Fully 36% of Americans paid very closely attention to events in Iraq and 35% said this was the news story they followed more closely than any […]