One year can be a lifetime in politics.

Just 12 months after sweeping into the White House and expanding their majorities in both the House and Senate on a wave of anti-Bush fervor, Democrats are on the defensive. Big Republican gubernatorial wins in New Jersey and Virginia this past Tuesday have changed the dynamic.

Forty-nine percent (49%) of U.S. voters now say it is at least somewhat likely that Republicans will win control of Congress next year. Fifty-two percent (52%) say Republicans are the party most likely to gain seats in Congress in next year’s mid-term elections.

Republican congressional candidates also continue to hold a lead over Democrats in the past week’s Generic Congressional Ballot. Forty-two percent (42%) would vote for their district’s Republican congressional candidate while 38% would opt for his or her Democratic opponent.

Given the anger in the overall electorate and the unhappiness rank-and-file GOP voters have with their elected representatives, Republican gains in the mid-term elections are far from assured, though. After all, they’re a year away. For the third straight month, too, the number of Americans identifying themselves as Democrats inched up while the number of Republicans fell slightly.

Fifty-five percent (55%) of voters expect politics in Washington, D.C. to become more partisan over the next year. Fifty percent (50%) say the president is governing already like a partisan Democrat, up 11 points from when he took office in January.

But then Americans are a little less enthusiastic about Obama’s presidency. Forty-five percent (45%) of adults say they would be at least somewhat likely to vote for Obama if he was up for reelection right now, but 49% say they wouldn’t back the president’s reelection.

One possible explanation is that voters for the first time are blaming Obama nearly as much as his predecessor, George W. Bush, for the country’s continuing economic problems.

The president and his team ran a nearly flawless campaign and handled the transition just as well. But once the campaigning was over and the governing began, his numbers began to slip.

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll shows Obama’s job approval ratings so far in November unchanged from the month before. The president’s ratings dipped slightly in October after stabilizing in September.

Still, when tracking the president’s job approval on a daily basis, people sometimes get so caught up in the day-to-day fluctuations that they miss the bigger picture. To look at the longer-term trends, Rasmussen Reports compiles the numbers on a full-month basis. Looking back to January highlights how bumpy the president’s ride has been since he became president.

Just 14% of voters now say Hillary Clinton would be doing a worse job as president than Obama if she had won last year’s Democratic presidential nomination.

The president is also suffering from the public’s unhappiness with the health care reform plan he has proposed with congressional Democrats. Forty-two percent (42%) now favor the plan, but 54% oppose it. These numbers have been roughly the same for weeks.

Seventy-two percent (72%) of voters nationwide say passage of the legislation could lead companies to drop private health insurance coverage for their employees which would then force them into a government-run “public option” insurance plan. But voters are evenly divided over whether passage of the health care measure will actually force them to change their existing health care coverage. Still, repeated surveys show that most Americans are very happy with the coverage they have and don’t want to change it.

Eighty-five percent (85%) of voters are insistent that anyone seeking government services should have to prove that they are legally allowed to be in this country. Whether illegal immigrants will be able to get health care assistance under the president’s plan has been a highly charged element of the debate.
Voters also are getting more worried about the president’s handling of national security issues. Forty-five percent (45%) say Obama is doing a good or excellent job in this area, but 37% rate his national security performance as poor, up 17 points from when he first entered office in January.

Voter confidence in America’s conduct of the War on Terror has fallen to its lowest level since the first week of January in 2007. Voters are much less optimistic about the course of the war in Iraq, too.

Despite the president’s high-profile outreach to global Islam, most notably in a speech in Egypt in June, only 16% of voters now say America’s relationship with the Muslim world will be better one year from now. That's the lowest level measured all year.

The president continues to be bruised by the economy as well. The government announced on Friday that the nation’s unemployment rate hit 10.2 percent in October, the highest level in 23 years. Even before that announcement, most Americans favored extending unemployment benefits for an additional 20 weeks, which Congress passed this week and the president signed into law.

As part of the same bill, the federal government extended and expanded a tax credit program for first-time home buyers. Most Americans like the idea of providing tax credits for those buying their first home but are less enthusiastic when told it will cost several billion dollars. They strongly oppose expanding it to existing homeowners, although Congress did just that this week.

With most of its economic stimulus plans drawing substantial public criticism this year, it’s no wonder that voters are sharply divided over what the chief legislative role of Congress is. Forty-eight percent (48%) think passing good legislation is a more important role for Congress than preventing bad legislation from becoming law. But nearly as many voters (46%) believe it’s more important for Congress to stop bad bills before they’re passed into law.

The Rasmussen Employment Index held relatively steady in October, but for the 13th month in a row, the percentage of firms laying off employees exceeds the number that are hiring. Yet employed Americans are slightly more confident than they were this summer that leaving their current jobs will be their own decision rather than their employer’s.

In the United States today, workers expect to change jobs on a regular basis. Just 37% of working Americans expect to be working for the same employer in five years.That figure is 10 percentage points since July and may partially reflect discouraging short-term economic conditions. However, data from recent years consistently shows that Americans plan on a career path with multiple employers.

The Discover Consumer Spending Monitor, which tracks consumer spending confidence, fell slightly in October but is still up a modest eight points from the first of the year. However, consumers had a more pessimistic take on the economy this past month, with 46% saying it’s getting worse while 29% believe the it is getting better.

The Rasmussen Consumer Index, which measures the economic confidence of consumers on a daily basis, slipped a bit in the past week but is up 14 points from the beginning of 2009. The Rasmussen Investor Index, which measures the economic confidence of investors on a daily basis, rose slightly this week and is 26 points ahead of early January. But overwhelming percentages of consumers and investors continue to believe the economy is in a recession.

In other surveys this past week:

-- The president recently signed into law "hate crime" legislation that adds sexual orientation to other protected categories. Forty-nine percent (49%) of Americans feel criminals should be prosecuted more severely if it can be proved that their crime was motivated by the victim’s race, color, religion, national origin or sexual orientation. Thirty-one percent (31%) disagree, and 19% are not sure.

-- On the heels of Ford’s better-than-expected third-quarter profits and its promise of solid profitability by 2011, 68% of Americans adults hold a favorable opinion of the one company that passed on a government bailout. Ford continues to far outdistance public perceptions of General Motors and Chrysler.

-- Thirty-four percent (34%) of voters this week say the United States is heading in the right direction, but 61% continue to believe the nation is heading down the wrong track.

-- Fifty-two percent (52%) of voters feel that America’s best days are in the past. This marks the highest level of voter pessimism in two years and is up 13 points from a year ago when Obama was elected president.

-- Sixty-eight percent (68%) of working Americans identify themselves as middle class.

-- Some National Guardsmen returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan are finding that their civilian jobs have been eliminated by companies forced by the economy to make deep budget cuts. Sixty percent (60%) of Americans think the law should be changed to prevent employers from eliminating any jobs held by those called for National Guard duty.

--Just eight percent (8%) of baseball fans said they were going to place a bet on the World Series this year. Eighty-eight percent (88%) said they would not place a wager on the series this year.

-- We’re assuming everyone has been on time this week despite the end of Daylight Saving Time because 84% of Americans said they would be – correctly - moving their clocks back an hour before they went to bed last Saturday night.

Check for the latest, regularly updated numbers on our home page and keep up with our daily Presidential Tracking Poll. Premium Members get access to more data, a morning briefing from Scott Rasmussen and an advance look at key findings.

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