29% Say U.S. Heading in Right Direction

Twenty-nine percent (29%) 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 April 2. 

This finding is unchanged from the previous week but up two points from the week before that which marked the lowest level of confidence this year.  The number of voters who think the country is heading in the right direction has been 30% or higher most weeks since mid-December after generally being in the mid- to high 20s since mid-June 2013.

Sixty-three percent (63%) of voters now believe the nation is headed down the wrong track, also unchanged from last week.

A year ago at this time, 30% felt the country was heading in the right direction, while 62% thought it was on the wrong track.

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The national telephone survey of 2,500 Likely Voters was conducted by Rasmussen Reports from March 29-April 2, 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.

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

Seventy-nine percent (79%) of Republicans and 69% of voters not affiliated with either major political party say the country is on the wrong track. Forty-three percent (43%) of Democrats agree, but slightly more (47%) think it’s heading in the right direction.

Black voters are almost evenly divided over the direction of the country. Sixty-nine percent (69%) of whites and a plurality (49%) of other minority voters say America's headed down the wrong track.

The more money one earns, the more likely he or she is to think the country is heading in the right direction, but even among those who earn $100,000 or more a year, more than half say the country is headed down the wrong track. 

More voters than ever feel the United States is not aggressive enough in deporting those who are here illegally, even as President Obama continues to push his plan to make up to five million illegal immigrants safe from deportation.

Bill Clinton made news when he declared nearly 20 years ago that the era of big government is over. Voters still prefer smaller, cheaper government but clearly recognize that Barack Obama, the next Democrat after Clinton to be in the White House, has reversed that trend.

Just over half (52%) of Americans favor a tax system where everyone pays the same percentage of their income in taxes.

The debate over religious freedom laws continues. But voters send mixed signals: On one hand, they oppose a religious freedom law in their state, worried that it will discriminate against gays, but at the same time they believe more strongly that a Christian photographer should be able to turn down a same-sex marriage job for religious reasons, the very freedom that such a law protects. 

Fifty-four percent (54%) of voters think anti-gay discrimination is a problem in America, but many also still believe the government is oversensitive to the concerns of minority groups. 

America is still a strongly Christian nation.

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