Most Americans express at least a passing interest in news about science, with 35% saying they enjoy keeping up with science news “a lot” and another 41% saying they enjoy keeping up with it “some.” Only about a quarter (24%) say they do not enjoy following news about science. By comparison, 54% of Americans say […]
One of the major findings from the 1991 Times Mirror Center study was the high level of antipathy toward ethnic and religious minorities in Eastern Europe. With communist rule over in most of the region, and in its final stages in the Soviet Union, long-simmering conflicts among groups within these societies were reemerging. Today, in […]
The public takes a somewhat less cynical view of government today than it did in 2007. Americans are less likely to say that government is wasteful and inefficient (57%, compared with 62% in 2007) and more likely to believe that government is “really run for the benefit of all the people” (49%, compared with 45% […]
Overview Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has seen his favorability ratings improve and now enjoys a positive balance of opinion among the general public: 40% rate him favorably, 28% unfavorably. This marks a reversal of opinion from February 2008, during the latter stages of the GOP primary campaign, when just 30% viewed him favorably and […]
Overview Centrism has emerged as a dominant factor in public opinion as the Obama era begins. The political values and core attitudes that the Pew Research Center has monitored since 1987 show little overall ideological movement. Republicans and Democrats are even more divided than in the past, while the growing political middle is steadfastly mixed […]
U.S. President Barack Obama is popular in nations across much of the world. This is especially true in Western Europe, although he also receives extremely high ratings in countries such as Canada, Japan, South Korea, India, Brazil, Kenya and Nigeria. In most predominantly Muslim nations surveyed, there is less enthusiasm for the new president, with […]
Summary of Findings From January through May, a growing proportion of Americans said they were hearing a mix of good and bad news about the economy. More recently, however, there has been a steady increase in the share saying that the economic news is mostly bad. Currently, 41% say they are hearing mostly bad news […]
A new analysis by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life finds that African-Americans are markedly more religious on a variety of measures than the U.S. population as a whole. Source: Pew Forum U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, conducted in 2007, released in 2008 Data tables available in the full report.