27% Say U.S. Heading in Right Direction

Twenty-seven percent (27%) 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 November 9.
 
The number who say the country is heading in the right direction is unchanged from a week ago. This finding has now been in the 23% to 27% range nearly every week since early June and has been below 30% most weeks since June of last year.

Sixty-six percent (65%) of voters believe the nation is headed down the wrong track. This is down one point from the previous survey.
 
A year ago at this time, 24% said the country was heading in the right direction, while 69% thought it was heading down the wrong track.

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The national telephone survey of 3,500 Likely Voters was conducted by Rasmussen Reports from November 3-9, 2014. 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.

Eighty-five percent (85%) of Republicans and 70% of voters not affiliated with either major political party think the country is on the wrong track. Democrats are nearly evenly divided on the question.
 
Seventy-one percent (71%) of whites and 61% of other minority voters say the country is on the wrong track. Sixty-one percent (54%) of blacks disagree.
 
Sixty-seven percent (67%) of the Political Class believe the country is headed in the right direction, but 75% of Mainstream voters say it's on the wrong track.
 
Fifty-one percent (51%) of voters who would choose the Democratic candidate if their local congressional election were held today believe the country is headed in the right direction. Ninety percent (90%) of those who would choose the GOP candidate instead say the country is headed down the wrong track. 

Voters see the Republican takeover of Congress as more of a rejection of Democrats than a vote for Republicans.

But voters question whether President Obama set the right tone in his first press conference after Election Day, and most aren’t optimistic about his working relationship with the new Republican congressional majority. 

Thirty-five percent (35%) of Americans believe the job market is better than it was a year ago, and only 21% think unemployment will be higher in a year’s time. That’s more optimism than we’ve seen in several years. 

Just 36% of voters are even somewhat confident, though, that the Medicare system will pay them all promised retirement benefits in their lifetime.

Unfavorables for the new national health care law have fallen slightly to their lowest level in over a year, even as voters express less support for outright repeal and more support for tinkering with the law to improve it.

Crosstabs and historical data are available to Platinum Members only.

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