There were few surprises for Rasmussen Reports’ visitors on Election Day. A Fordham University study found our daily Presidential Tracking Poll was the most accurate of 23 national polls covering the campaign.
With President-elect Barack Obama already facing challenges from aboard, nearly half of voters (47%) say he will do a good or excellent job handling national security issues.
The current economic problems have drastically reduced consumer spending, and holiday shopping is no exception. Most adults (66%) expect to spend less than last year on gifts this holiday season, according to the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.
A majority of U.S. voters (52%) say the federal government needs to do more to deal with the current economic crisis, and 63% think the best stimulus would be more tax cuts. Just 20% think new government spending is what is needed, while 17% aren’t sure which is better.
Sixty-nine percent (69%) of Republican voters say Alaska Governor Sarah Palin helped John McCain’s bid for the presidency, even as news reports surface that some McCain staffers think she was a liability.
The Rasmussen Employment Index, a monthly measure of U.S. worker confidence in the employment market, fell sixteen points in October to 72.1. That’s the biggest single month drop and the lowest level of confidence ever recorded in the five-year history of the Index.
Though Barack Obama became president-elect just one day ago, 38% of voters already expect taxes to go up when he assumes the White House next year.
Fifty-five percent (55%) of U.S. voters rate the current Democratic-led Congress’ job performance as poor in a new Rasmussen Reports survey taken the night after Election Day. Just 11% think Congress is doing a good or excellent job.
Nearly nine out of 10 voters (88%) are glad the presidential election is over, but voters are evenly divided over whether politics in Washington will become more cooperative despite Barack Obama’s call for change from business as usual.
The final Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Election 2008 showed Barack Obama leading John McCain 52% to 46%. We are pleased to report that those figures precisely matched the actual election returns.
Elections do not deliver neat verdicts. The 2008 race so handily won by President-elect Barack Obama shouted that the American public wanted to see reform in Washington. So it just doesn't seem right that John McCain, a true reformer in the GOP, lost, while Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, holds a thin lead in his re-election bid -- even though Stevens was just convicted on seven felony counts for violating federal ethics laws.
The young and minority voters who swept Democrats to triumph call this the start of a new day. The many not-young whites who also backed Barack Obama might frame it a bit differently. To them, it's a hopeful return to an older day. Do not dismiss these older Caucasians. Without their considerable support in swing states, Obama would not have won.
In the end, American voters serve as the great equalizer. When one party goes too far, voters snap the leash, as they did on Tuesday.
When George W. Bush looks back someday on the wreckage of the past eight years, even he may someday realize that he missed his most important political opportunity in the months after 9/11. Despite his lackluster performance on that day, Americans stood with him as the symbol of the nation, displaying a steadfast and sober unity we had not felt for decades.
Four years ago, he was a State senator from Illinois. Four years ago, the idea of electing a black man as president of the United States was a fantasy.
Voter confidence about the situation in Iraq has hit an all time high.
For John McCain, the crash of Lehman Brothers on Wall Street was worse than the Crash of 1929. Looking back over the course of the campaign, it seems clear that the financial meltdown in mid-September was the final, decisive, event that secured Obama’s path to the White House.
While the majority of Americans believe relations with China are important, most do not think the economies of the two countries are very dependent on one another.
So when did voters really decide how they were going to vote?
In regard to attitude, America's conservatives could do worse than to be moved by those lines of Robert Blake from another place and another time on behalf of a similar sacred cause then not yet realized.
