35% Say U.S. Heading in Right Direction

Thirty-five percent (35%) of Likely U.S. Voters think the country is heading in the right direction, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey for the week ending January 25. 

This finding is up five points from the week before and is the highest level of confidence since March 2013. The number of voters who think the country is heading in the right direction was below 30% most weeks for the past year.

Fifty-seven percent (57%) of voters now believe the nation is headed down the wrong track, but that's down three points from the previous week. It's the lowest finding since March 2013.

A year ago at this time, 30% said the country was heading in the right direction, while 63% thought it was headed down the wrong track. 

President Obama's daily job approval ratings rose briefly to their highest levels in several months just after his State of the Union address last week but have since returned to their earlier levels. Democrats also have jumped to a three-point lead on the Generic Congressional Ballot. It will be interesting to see whether the latest Generic Ballot and right direction findings signal a trend or are just temporary spikes.

Economic and investor confidence, however, remain at their highest levels in several years.

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 The national telephone survey of 2,800 Likely Voters was conducted by Rasmussen Reports from January 19-25, 2015. The margin of sampling error for the survey is +/- 2 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Fifty-nine percent (59%) of Democrats say the country is headed in the right direction. Eighty-two percent (82%) of Republicans and 59% of voters not affiliated with either major political party think the country is on the wrong track. 

Sixty-three percent (63%) of white voters say the country is on the wrong track. Fifty-eight percent (58%) of black voters say the country is headed in the right direction. Other minority voters are almost evenly divided.

The older the voter, the more likely he or she is to think the country is headed in the wrong direction.`

Voters who work for the government are more likely than those in the private sector to think the country is headed the right way.

Investors are more positive about the direction of the country than non-investors.

While voters generally favor some of the proposals outlined by President Obama in his State of the Union address, they don’t agree that we’ve completely turned the corner economically.

Americans are sending positive signals about much of the economy, but they still remain deeper in debt than they were last year at this time.

Concern about inflation appears to be trending down, and Americans are more confident in the federal government to handle it.

While homeowner confidence in home values has reached new highs, Americans as a whole still aren’t convinced that it’s a good time to put a house on the market. 

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