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Survey of 1,000 Likely Voters February 1, 2006
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February 4, 2006--The final exam is scheduled for November, but President Bush received modest grades for the first test of Election 2006. Among those who watched at least some of the State-of-the-Union Address, 53% gave the President good or excellent marks. Twenty-six percent (26%) said fair and 20% poor. Among those who watch all or most of the speech, the President did a little better. However, that's largely because Republicans were more likely to watch most of the speech than Democrats. In fact, the data suggests that voters saw in the President's Address just what they expected to see. Among those who Strongly Approve of the President's Job Performance, 95% gave him good or excellent grades. Among those who Strongly Disapprove, 92% gave him fair or poor marks. Voters tend to trust the President a bit more than Democrats in Congress on Iraq and Immigration. They tend to trust Democrats in Congress slightly more on the economy and by a larger margin on health care. Americans strongly agree on the President's statement that the new Palestinian government must recognize Israel's right to exist. Fifty-three percent (53%) believe that the U.S. will be at war with Iran during the next year. An identical number (53%) believe gas prices will be higher in six months. Crosstabs and additional survey data is available for Premium Members [More Below] On the day after the speech, 53% of Americans got most of their news about the speech from television. Twenty percent (20%) read it in a newspaper, 13% heard about it on the radio, and 9% surfed the web. The speech was clearly not a dinner topic in many households--just 4% got most of their information about the speech from family, friends, and neighbors. 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.
The telephone survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted by Rasmussen Reports February1, 2005. The margin of sampling error for the survey is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. 37% of survey respondents were Republican, 37% Democrat, and 26% unaffiliated (see Methodology) |
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