Default Fault
Faced with the prospect of rising home foreclosures, the U.S. Treasury is considering expanding its program to freeze mortgage rates—to include more than subprime borrowers. According to a CNN/Opinion Research poll conducted in December, Americans are divided about the degree to which borrowers are to blame for the crisis and whether federal intervention is warranted. A thin majority (51 percent) of Americans surveyed said that people who could not pay their mortgages “should receive special treatment" to prevent default, while 46 percent said they should not. When it came to the banks and other financial institutions that made the loans, just 26 percent of Americans said the institutions should get special treatment. Seventy-two percent said they should not. 

Source: CNN/Opinion Research, December 2007.

YouTube Nation

More Americans are tuning into YouTube—and more frequently. In a recent Harris Interactive online poll, 65 percent of Americans reported watching a video on YouTube in 2007, up from 42 percent that said they had done so in 2006. Viewers that reported frequent use increased from 33 percent to 42 percent during the same period. In 2007, 30 percent reported watching “frequently, but less than one hour per week,” 10 percent reported watching between one and two hours per week, and 2 percent said that they watched more than two hours per week.
     Nearly half (48 percent) of all adults surveyed agreed that the best thing about YouTube was that you could find almost every video you might be looking for. Thirteen percent disagreed. In a separate item, 38 percent said the best thing about the service were the user-generated/amateur videos. Eighteen percent disagreed.
Source: Harris Interactive online survey, November 2007.

Primary Colors
When New Hampshire voters went to the polls this week, they kept with tradition—their state has hosted the nation’s earliest presidential primary since 1920. (Iowa has hosted the first caucus since 1972.) But according to a December Gallup poll, Americans are divided about whether or not this is a good thing. Twenty-eight percent of respondents said it is bad that Iowa and New Hampshire always go first, 26 percent said it is good, and 44 percent described it as neither good nor bad. Fifty-seven percent said that they liked the primary-caucus process overall—yet, in another question, 71 percent said it is a bad thing that nominees are usually determined before many states have held their primary or caucus. Source: The Gallup Organization (panel study), December 2007.

 
Family Matters
How important are candidates' personal lives to the 2008 presidential election? In a recent Gallup/USA Today poll, 54 percent of Americans said they would be bothered a great deal (28 percent) or a moderate amount (26 percent) if a presidential candidate had an extra-marital affair. Eighteen percent said it wouldn't bother them much, and another 28 percent said it wouldn't bother them at all. Americans expressed much less concern about other potential attributes of the first family, including the age of a candidate's spouse. Source: Gallup/USA Today, November 2007.
 

Political Corruption
Civil unrest in the wake of contested elections in Kenya—a country once renowned for its stability—is casting the issue of political corruption into sharp relief. Prior to the elections, a 47-nation survey conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Pew Global Attitudes Project found that 63 percent of Kenyans believed that “corrupt political leaders” was a “very big” problem in their country. Concerns over political corruption were even more severe in some other countries: more than 70 percent of people in Argentina, Brazil, Peru, the Czech Republic, Israel, Lebanon, the Palestinian territories, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Uganda described political corruption as a "very big" problem. The U.S. is not immune: 51 percent of Americans told Pew that "corrupt political leaders" was a "very big" problem in this country. The nation least concerned about political corruption is Sweden, where only 10 percent described it as a "very big" problem.
Source: Kaiser Family Foundation/Pew Global Attitudes Project, 2007. 

Presidential Approval?

President Bush ended 2007 with an approval rating of 32 percent. The president’s rating has not been above 40 percent since September 2006—the worse record for any president except Harry Truman. Truman spent 26 months below 40 percent compared to Bush’s 14. Institutions usually fare worse than individuals, and Congress ended the year with a 22 percent rating.

Source: The Gallup Organization, December 2007.

 

 

The Election's Pulse

The National Election Pool (NEP), a consortium of six major news organizations—ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox, NBC, and the Associated Press—is keeping close tabs on voting in the 2008 primary season. Prior to the race in Iowa, Edison Media Research, a firm that specializes in election polling, announced that it would conduct entrance polls at 80 caucus precinct sites (out of 1,781 for Democrats and Republicans each) on behalf of the consortium. The entrance poll added to what already had been an exceptionally busy polling season, particularly in Iowa. According to Jon Cohen, polling director of The Washington Post, more than 80,000 likely Iowa voters were surveyed in the run-up to last week's caucuses. As a percentage of expected turnout, that was "something of a record.”

Source: Interviews with Joe Lenski by Mark Blumenthal at pollster.com and Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center, December 2007.