Polling

After NBC spent weeks painting congressional Republicans as the villains who caused the government shutdown, on Thursday's NBC Nightly News, anchor Brian Williams opened the broadcast by smugly announcing: "Who do the American people blame for the shutdown of their government? Tonight our new NBC News poll is out and the answer is clear." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump…

The big talk in conservative radio on Thursday is Barack Obama’s 37 percent approval rating in the latest AP poll. Hosts are also making fun of how AP announced this number: buried in paragraph eight of a story headlined “Poll: No Heroes In Shutdown, GOP Gets Most Blame.” Guess what? Brent Baker reported when an AP poll found President Bush's approval rating hit a new low of 37 percent on…

For two straight days, Nancy Cordes strongly hinted on CBS This Morning that House Republicans were to blame for the ongoing government shutdown. On Tuesday, Cordes hounded GOP Congressman Robert Pittenger: "All the polls show that a majority of Americans don't want to see the government shut down over ObamaCare. How can you say the American people is on your side?" The correspondent tossed a…

On Wednesday's CBS Evening News and Thursday's CBS This Morning, Nancy Cordes repeatedly played up how an unidentified Republican in the U.S. Senate attacked a House proposal to de-fund ObamaCare as "suicide". Cordes underlined that "Speaker Boehner was forced into the risky strategy by his right flank", and wondered if the plan was "just a recipe for a government shutdown". Norah O'Donnell…

A recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll stumbled across a very interesting finding: 44 percent of respondents said they did not think Congress should raise the debt ceiling before the U.S. reaches it in October, while only half as many (22 percent) said Congress should raise it. On Friday, Andrea Mitchell reported that finding on her eponymous MSNBC program Andrea Mitchell Reports, but she…

A Friday article in Politico described a "GOP on the Rise" while citing the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, noting that "Republicans are now leading Democrats on handling several key issues..." By contrast, on Friday's NBC Today, political director Chuck Todd minimized that development, claiming that Republicans "only fare a little bit better" in the poll than Democrats. [Listen to…

President Obama’s signature health care law continues to lose support, but NBC’s Chuck Todd sees no problem with the law itself. On Thursday’s Morning Joe on MSNBC, he chalked up the declining support to bad messaging by ObamaCare supporters. Host Joe Scarborough announced that 57 percent of Americans now oppose most or all of the law, according to a recent CNN poll. In addition, the AFL-CIO…

The liberals at MSNBC continue their PR campaign on behalf of ObamaCare. On Wednesday’s PoliticsNation, the Rev. Al Sharpton cited one very convenient finding from a recent poll: only 6 percent of registered voters want Congress to delay and defund the Affordable Care Act. However, Sharpton ignored two other key findings from the same poll that were far less favorable to his pro-ObamaCare…

CNN's Carol Costello said public opinion of Obamacare is "pretty evenly split" when recent polls are showing a double-digit gap between support and opposition of the law, with more people opposing the law than supporting it.   "Well most of the polls I've seen, it's pretty evenly split, right?" Costello interrupted her guest Will Cain, who had argued "Almost every poll now, over 50 percent…

Now for some good news, and it has nothing to do with the birth of the royal baby. According to a USA Today/Bipartisan Policy Center poll, "Americans by more than 2-1 say the best way to make positive changes in society is through volunteer organizations and charities, not by being active in government." Even better news: People under 30 are especially put off by politics and are "…

Can MSNBC’s Martin Bashir really be this ill-informed? Consider that on Monday’s installment of the program hysterically bearing his own name, Bashir made it seem that he believes if a poll questioned 21 percent Republicans, that means only 21 percent of Americans identify themselves as Republican (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

Americans hold "[a] complicated mix of views on abortion," the Washington Post insists, reporting the results of a new Washington Post-ABC News poll with interesting data on some roiling controversies in the nation's political discourse regarding abortion. "Poll: Most in the U.S. back stricter time limits, not rules that hinder clinics," a subheadline to Juliet Eilperin's page A6 story in the…

On Wednesday's CBS This Morning, Norah O'Donnell zeroed in on her network's latest poll that found that "more Americans than ever want the health care law repealed". However, she tried to explain it away by asserting that the public just needed to be educated: "This is the same problem the White House has faced from the very beginning about a lack of understanding about what is involved in…

On Dec. 1, 1955, a churchgoing woman of character refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Ala. Many credit Rosa Parks' courageous action that day with launching the civil rights movement. While I have great respect for what Ms. Parks did that day, however, she did not start the civil rights movement. The movement began long before, and public opinion led the way. Rosa Parks' role…