Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World

Politics

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    News Audiences Increasingly Politicized

    Overview Despite tumultuous events abroad, the public’s news habits have been relatively stable over the past two years. Yet modest growth has continued in two important areas online news and cable news. Regarding the latter, the expanding audience for the Fox News Channel stands out. Since 2000, the number of Americans who regularly watch Fox […]

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    Bottom-Line Pressures Now Hurting Coverage, Say Journalists

    Overview This report is part of State of the News Media 2004, a annual publication of the Project for Excellence in Journalism. Journalists are unhappy with the way things are going in their profession these days. Many give poor grades to the coverage offered by the types of media that serve most Americans: daily newspapers, […]

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    Iraq Prison Scandal Hits Home, But Most Reject Troop Pullout

    Summary of Findings Public satisfaction with national conditions has fallen to 33%, its lowest level in eight years, in the wake of revelations of prisoner abuse committed by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. President Bush’s overall job approval rating also has dropped into negative territory: 44% approve of his job performance, while […]

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    Bush Ratings Rise Even as Iraq Concerns Continue

    Summary of Findings President Bush’s approval ratings have improved over the month of April even as Americans continue to express strong concerns about Iraq and the way the president is handling that situation. The latest nationwide survey by the Pew Research Center finds 48% approving and 43% disapproving of Bush’s overall job performance. This is […]

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    Abortion a More Powerful Issue for Women

    Public divisions over access to abortion are long-standing, and have changed only slightly over the past two decades. Currently, 58% say they oppose making it more difficult for a woman to get an abortion, while 36% are in favor of further restrictions. This is virtually unchanged from polling conducted in the early 1990s. In 1987, […]

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    Polls Face Growing Resistance, But Still Representative

    Summary of Findings Faced with a growing number of unsolicited telephone calls and armed with increasingly sophisticated technology for screening their calls, more Americans are refusing to participate in telephone polls than was the case just six years ago. Yet a survey research experiment to gauge the effects of respondent cooperation on survey quality indicates […]

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    Public Support for War is Steady, But Bush Job Ratings Slip

    Summary of Findings Public support for war in Iraq has been unaffected by the murders and desecration of the corpses of American citizens in Falluja. However, continued turmoil and violence in Iraq may be taking a toll on President Bush’s approval ratings. More Americans now disapprove of the way he is doing his job than […]