Thirty-four percent (34%) now believe that the
U.S. is safer than it was before 9/11. That's down from 37% last
month and 38% the month before. For the first time ever, 50% of
Americans say the U.S. is not safer that it was before the 9/11
terrorist attacks.
Just 33% give the President good or excellent
ratings for handling the situation in Iraq. That is down from 36% a
month ago.
Thirty-two percent (32%) now say things will get
better in Iraq over the next six months. That's up from 30% a month
ago and 29%. Forty-five percent (45%) expect things to get worse.
At the beginning of 2005, just 28% of Americans
thought the situation in Iraq would get better over the next six
month. A Rasmussen Reports survey
at the time found that 50% of Americans expected things to get
worse.
Thirty-three percent (33%) of Americans believe
that, in the long run, the U.S. mission in Iraq will be viewed as a
success. Forty-seven percent (47%) believe it will be viewed as a
failure. Those figures are also little changed from last
month.
Current results are not precisely comparable to
2004 survey results. Our 2004 data was based upon Interviews
with Likely Voters. In 2005, our data is based upon a sample of
American Adults. It is likely that this change could have a 2-3
percentage point impact on the reported results.
National
Security issues were the most important voting issues of
Election 2004.
Rasmussen Reports is an electronic publishing firm
specializing in the collection, publication, and distribution of
public opinion polling information.
Rasmussen Reports was the nation's most accurate
polling firm during the Presidential election and the only one to
project both Bush and Kerry's vote total within half a percentage
point of the actual outcome.
During Election 2004, RasmussenReports.com was
also the top-ranked public opinion research site on the web. We had
twice as many visitors as our nearest competitor and nearly as many
as all competitors combined.
Scott Rasmussen, president of Rasmussen Reports,
has been an independent pollster for more than a decade.
To keep up with our latest releases, be sure to
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The national telephone survey of 1,000 Likely
Voters was conducted by Rasmussen Reports October 15-16, 2005.
The margin of sampling error for the survey is +/- 3 percentage
points with a 95% level of confidence. (see Methodology)