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POLITICS

51% See Being Compared to Reagan As A Positive for a Candidate

Describing a political candidate as being “like Ronald Reagan” is a winner as far as most voters are concerned. Being called “a socialist” or “a career politician,” on the other hand, is a sure loser.

Continuing Rasmussen Reports’ survey of political labels, 51% of Likely U.S. Voters say in our latest national telephone survey that comparing a candidate to Reagan is a positive. It’s the only label out of 10 we tested that a majority of voters responded favorably to. Twenty-two percent (22%) think saying a candidate is like Reagan is a negative, and 21% rate it somewhere in between the two. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

This is the first time in surveys for several years that a majority of voters view a Reagan comparison as a positive, but it’s always been the best label for a candidate as far as voters concerned.Reagan’s also the best of the recent presidents to be compared to

Yet while 60% of Mainstream voters think being called like Reagan is a positive for a candidate, 52% of the Political Class view it as a negative. Ninety percent (90%) of Tea Party members consider the Reagan comparison a positive label, compared to 38% of non-members.

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The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on August 27-28, 2011 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

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