Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
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Americans want expanded exploration and development of coal, oil and gas in the U.S. but also want limits on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions. Michele Obama’s favorability stays strong but the president’s and Sarah Palin’s popularity slip.
Overview With the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico now nearly two months old, the public is sending mixed signals about U.S. energy policy. Despite the growing damage from the Gulf oil leak, the public generally favors continuing to drill for oil and gas in U.S. waters. And in setting priorities for energy legislation […]
Independents are often described as a cohesive bloc of voters, whose views consistently fall midway between those of Republicans and Democrats. Yet a closer look at independents finds a substantial degree of diversity among these voters – demographic, ideological and in their attitudes and opinions. In this survey, we identify four main groups of independent […]
The public continues to express conflicted views of Islam. Favorable opinions of Islam have declined since 2005, but there has been virtually no change over the past year in the proportion of Americans saying that Islam is more likely than other religions to encourage violence. As was the case a year ago, slightly more people […]
Attitudes and actions Over time, users have become less likely to express concern about the amount of information available about them online. [14.numoffset=”14″ As is noted elsewhere in this report, this survey was fielded before Facebook announced the most recent and controversial changes to its default privacy settings.] To even the most casual news observer, […]
Adult internet users under age 30 are more likely than older adults online to take steps to limit the amount of personal information available about themselves on the internet.
Public trust in the federal government in Washington is at one of its lowest levels in half a century. Just 22% of Americans say they trust the government to do what is right “just about always” (3%) or “most of the time” (19%). The current level of skepticism was matched previously only in the periods […]