Photo by flickr user jukebox909 used under a Creative Commons license.

Hardly a day goes by without news of the latest opinion poll surveying the attitudes of Americans or Oklahomans. While many polls are carefully worded and fairly presented, some issue polling is so sloppy or biased that one suspects its only purpose is to promote the political agenda of the pollster or their client. This certainly seemed to be the case with a recent Rasmussen poll of American’s attitudes on poverty, welfare, and immigration.

The poll, which was released to coincide with the fifteenth anniversary of the 1996 welfare reform law, seems at first glance to suggest that Americans are unhappy with the nation’s welfare system and believe too many undeserving people are receiving public assistance.  But a closer look suggests that the poll reveals next to nothing about what Americans think. Read the rest of this entry »

A new poll from the Pew Research Center presents interesting findings about the state of public opinion regarding the state fiscal crisis.  A late June poll of 1,001 adults found a majority of respondents saying that states should fix their own budget problems by cutting services or raising taxes,  rather than relying on additional help from the federal government (In the poll, just 26 percent agreed that,”The federal government should give more money to states, even if it increases deficit,” compared to 56 percent who said, “States should take of this, by rising taxes or cutting services). However, when asked about the actual options for balancing state  budgets, solid majorities of Americans said no to everything:

Pew Research/National Journal Congressional Connection Poll, June 2010

The message from the American public couldn’t be clearer: balance the budget, but don’t cut services and don’t raise taxes. With such a strong popular mandate from the voters, is it any wonder that our elected officials are so eager to make the tough political choices?