As of 2022, former President Bill Clinton was the president who created the most jobs in the United States, at **** million jobs created during his eight year term in office. Former President Ronald Reagan created the second most jobs during his term, at **** million.

This statistic shows the average annual change in real GDP per capita in the United States from President Hoover to Obama, as of 2011. The biggest economic growth happened during Franklin D. Roosevelt's presidency. The Real Gross Domestic Product per capita increased by 5.25 percent each year.

Additional information on President Barack Obama’s first term economic policy performance

“It’s the economy, stupid” as the now famous saying by former President Bill Clinton goes is often used to demonstrate the importance continuants place on the economy’s performance. Appointed to President of the United States in 2008, President Obama entered the job in the early stages of a global economic crisis. The unemployment rate in the United States since 1990 demonstrates that Obama oversaw a reduction in unemployment rate since an initially sharp increase to over 9 percent in 2009 and 2010. Prior to the reduction, public approval of President Obama and the Republicans in congress in handling the economy shows that the public’s trust in Obama waned from 61 percent in February 2009 to 42 percent in November 2011. The fluctuation of America’s economy meant that Obama’s first term saw him reach an average of 76 thousand private sector jobs created per month as of June 2012, leaving him sixth in private sector job creation on the list of post-war presidents.

As leader of the most economically influential country on the planet, praise and criticism of Obama’s economic performance is also a global issue. In 2012, opinion on Obama’s management of global economic issues by country demonstrates the variety in opinion held in and across countries. While countries such as Britain and Germany whose economies appeared to be recovering held Obama’s economic policy in a positive light, opinion was more negative in Egypt and Greece were the economic situation was less optimistic.

Unemployment Rate in South Africa increased to 33.20 percent in the second quarter of 2025 from 32.90 percent in the first quarter of 2025. This dataset provides - South Africa Unemployment Rate - actual values, historical data, forecast, chart, statistics, economic calendar and news.

The outcome of the 2016 election made it abundantly clear that victory in US presidential contests depends on the Electoral College much more than on direct universal suffrage. This fact points to the importance of using state-level models to arrive at adequate predictions of winners and losers in US presidential elections. In fact, the use of a model disaggregated to the state level and focusing on three types of measures—namely, changes in the unemployment rate, presidential popularity, and indicators of long-term patterns in the regional strength of the Democratic and Republican parties—has in the past enabled us to produce fairly accurate forecasts of the number of Electoral College votes for the presidential candidates of the two major American parties. In this article, we bring various modifications to this model to improve its overall accuracy. With Joe Biden out of the race, this revised model predicts that Donald Trump will succeed in winning back the presidency with 341 electoral votes against 197 for Kamala Harris.

This poll is part of a continuing series of monthly surveys that solicit public opinion on the presidency and on a range of other political and social issues. Respondents were asked if they felt that things in the United States were going in the right direction and whether they approved of how Bush was handling the presidency, the economy, race relations, education, and the environment. Respondents also offered approval ratings of Congress and their own Congressional representatives, rated the condition of the economy, and indicated whether they were better off financially than in 1989 when George Bush became president. In addition, respondents gave their impressions of Bush, Bill Clinton, Ross Perot, Dan Quayle, and television character Murphy Brown. They were also asked whether Vice President Quayle would be qualified to take over as president if something happened to Bush, and whether after four years of Bush a new president was needed that could set the country in a new direction. Concerning the 1992 presidential election, those surveyed rated their chances of voting, indicated for whom they would vote if the election were held the day of the interview, and commented on whether they supported a candidate because they liked him or because they didn't like the other candidates. Perot supporters were asked whether they would vote for Bush or Clinton if Perot did not run, and whether they would switch their support from Perot to one of the two major-party candidates in November. All respondents were asked if they thought the candidates were qualified, whether there was a candidate for whom they would definitely not vote under any circumstances, and whether they would be better off financially under Bush, Clinton, or Perot. Those surveyed were also asked which candidate would do the best job of dealing with a variety of problems including race relations, unemployment, foreign affairs, the economy, the environment, health care, and protecting the Social Security system. Respondents indicated the applicability of various characteristics to each of the candidates including strong leadership, vision for the future, trustworthiness in a crisis, understanding the needs of average Americans, honesty, the right temperament to serve as president, and high moral standards. In addition, those surveyed indicated whether the views of Bush, Clinton, and Perot were too liberal, too conservative, or just about right, whether they had a good idea of where the three candidates planned to lead the nation in the next four years, and whether they would be more or less likely to support a presidential candidate who had engaged in extramarital affairs, had never run for public office, or had come from a wealthy, privileged background. Other topics included assessments of the Republican and Democratic parties, re-electing representatives in Congress, the role of the federal government, and the Los Angeles riots of 1992. Background information on respondents includes political alignment, voter registration status, most recent presidential vote choice, education, age, religion, social class, area of residence, marital status, household composition, labor union membership, employment status, Hispanic origin, household income, and sex.

This is the dataset I used to figure out which sociodemographic factor including the current pandemic status of each state has the most significan impace on the result of the US Presidential election last year. I also included sentiment scores of tweets created from 2020-10-15 to 2020-11-02 as well, in order to figure out the effect of positive/negative emotion for each candidate - Donald Trump and Joe Biden - on the result of the election.

Details for each variable are as below: - state: name of each state in the United States, including District of Columbia - elec16, elec20: dummy variable indicating whether Trump gained the electoral votes of each state or not. If the electors casted their votes for Trump, the value is 1; otherwise the value is 0 - elecchange: dummy variable indicating whether each party flipped the result in 2020 compared to that of the 2016 - demvote16: the rate of votes that the Democrats, i.e. Hillary Clinton earned in the 2016 Presidential election - repvote16: the rate of votes that the Republicans , i.e. Donald Trump earned in the 2016 Presidential election - demvote20: the rate of votes that the Democrats, i.e. Joe Biden earned in the 2020 Presidential election - repvote20: the rate of votes that the Republicans , i.e. Donald Trump earned in the 2020 Presidential election - demvotedif: the difference between demvote20 and demvote16 - repvotedif: the difference between repvote20 and repvote16 - pop: the population of each state - cumulcases: the cumulative COVID-19 cases on the Election day - caseMar ~ caseOct: the cumulative COVID-19 cases during each month - Marper10k ~ Octper10k: the cumulative COVID-19 cases during each month per 10 thousands - unemp20: the unemployment rate of each state this year before the election - unempdif: the difference between the unemployment rate of the last year and that of this year - jan20unemp ~ oct20unemp: the unemployment rate of each month - cumulper10k: the cumulative COVID-19 cases on the Election day per 10 thousands - b_str_poscount_total: the total number of positive tweets on Biden measured by the SentiStrength - b_str_negcount_total: the total number of negative tweets on Biden measured by the SentiStrength - t_str_poscount_total: the total number of positive tweets on Trump measured by the SentiStrength - t_str_poscount_total: the total number of negative tweets on Trump measured by the SentiStrength - b_str_posprop_total: the proportion of positive tweets on Biden measured by the SentiStrength - b_str_negprop_total: the proportion of negative tweets on Biden measured by the SentiStrength - t_str_posprop_total: the proportion of positive tweets on Trump measured by the SentiStrength - t_str_negprop_total: the proportion of negative tweets on Trump measured by the SentiStrength - white: the proportion of white people - colored: the proportion of colored people - secondary: the proportion of people who has attained the secondary education - tertiary: the proportion of people who has attained the tertiary education - q3gdp20: GDP of the 3rd quarter 2020 - q3gdprate: the growth rate of the 3rd quarter 2020, compared to that of the same quarter last year - 3qsgdp20: GDP of 3 quarters 2020 - 3qsrate20: the growth rate of GDP compared to that of the 3 quarters last year - q3gdpdif: the difference in the level of GDP of the 3rd quarter compared to the last quarter - q3rate: the growth rate of the 3rd quarter compared to the last quarter - access: the proportion of households having the Internet access

Context

This is a dataset that I built by scraping the United States Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics. I was looking for county-level unemployment data and realized that there was a data source for this, but the data set itself hadn't existed yet, so I decided to write a scraper and build it out myself.

Content

This data represents the Local Area Unemployment Statistics from 1990-2016, broken down by state and month. The data itself is pulled from this mapping site:

https://data.bls.gov/map/MapToolServlet?survey=la&map=county&seasonal=u

Further, the ever-evolving and ever-improving codebase that pulled this data is available here:

https://github.com/jayrav13/bls_local_area_unemployment

Acknowledgements

Of course, a huge shoutout to bls.gov and their open and transparent data. I've certainly been inspired to dive into US-related data recently and having this data open further enables my curiosities.

Inspiration

I was excited about building this data set out because I was pretty sure something similar didn't exist - curious to see what folks can do with it once they run with it! A curious question I had was surrounding Unemployment vs 2016 Presidential Election outcome down to the county level. A comparison can probably lead to interesting questions and discoveries such as trends in local elections that led to their most recent election outcome, etc.

Next Steps

Version 1 of this is as a massive JSON blob, normalized by year / month / state. I intend to transform this into a CSV in the future as well.

This special topic poll, conducted January 13-15, 1997, is part of a continuing series of monthly polls that solicit public opinion on the presidency and on a range of other political and social issues. This data collection was undertaken to assess public opinion prior to President Bill Clinton's second-term inauguration as president of the United States. Respondents were asked to give their opinions of President Clinton and his handling of the first term of his presidency, whether he would do a better or worse job in his second term in office, whether they approved of his choices for Cabinet and other top positions in his administration, and what the nature of his relationship with Congress should be in his second term. Views were sought on whether President Clinton had made progress toward reducing unemployment and improving education during his first term, and whether he would make substantial progress in these areas during his second term. Respondents rated the most important issue facing the country, whether they were better or worse off financially compared to four years ago, whether they approved of the way Congress was handling its job, whether they expected Congress to do a better job in the next two years, and whether they trusted the Clinton administration or the Republicans in Congress to handle the main problems the nation would face over the next few years. Other questions asked whether respondents approved of the way Hillary Clinton was handling her job as first lady and the amount of influence she held over her husband, and whether she should play a greater role in her husband's second administration. A series of questions asked about recent allegations involving President Clinton, including Whitewater, the Democratic National Campaign Committee's acceptance of foreign contributions, and former Arkansas state employee Paula Jones's sexual harassment charges, and whether they would interfere with his ability to serve as president. Additional topics addressed what actions the government should take to protect the long-term financial stability of Social Security and the Medicare health system and the overall level of ethics and honesty in politics and the federal government. Demographic variables include sex, age, race, education level, household income, political party affiliation, political philosophy, and voter participation history.

Keyword counts from US Presidential State of the Union Addresses and Presidential Budget Messages. This was done using the Python scripts provided under https://github.com/JeremySilver/KeywordCountsPresidentialMessages. The raw text data is from The American Presidency Project (UCSB), with some Presidential Budget Messages being extracted from US Federal Budget documents available through FRASER (a digital library of U.S. economic, financial, and banking history) or, for the more recent documents the website of the White House.

The data headings are:

• pid: in most cases, this is the index for the text document as archived on The American Presidency Project website. In some cases, this was the filename of a plain-text file read directly.
• year: Year that the message was delivered.
• date: Date that the message was delivered.
• name: Name of the US President delivering the message.
• count_of_all_words: Count of all words in the document.
• count_of_keywords: Count of all keywords encountered in that document.
• Keyword specific columns - three per keyword. For example, for the 'energy' keyword, the 'energy' column gives the number of times the 'energy' keyword was counted in the message, 'energy_pct_of_keywords' gives this count as a percentage of all keywords, and 'energy_pct_of_all_words' gives this count as a percentage of all words

Below is the list of keywords that match when the search is applied to a dictionary file containing over 99,000 US English words.

• energy: 'energy'
• tax: 'nontaxable', 'overtax', 'overtaxed', 'overtaxes', 'overtaxing', 'surtax', 'surtaxed', 'surtaxes', 'surtaxing', 'surtaxs', 'tax', 'taxable', 'taxation', 'taxations', 'taxed', 'taxes', 'taxing', 'taxpayer', 'taxpayers', 'taxs'
• defense: 'defend', 'defense'
• education: 'education'
• employment: 'employ', 'employable', 'employe', 'employed', 'employee', 'employees', 'employer', 'employers', 'employes', 'employing', 'employment', 'employments', 'employs', 'underemployed', 'unemployable', 'unemployed', 'unemployeds', 'unemployment', 'unemployments'
• research: 'research', 'researched', 'researcher', 'researchers', 'researches', 'researching', 'researchs'
• shooting: 'shooting'
• space: 'space'
• nuclear: 'nuclear'
• natural resources: 'natural resources'
• racism: 'racism', 'civil rights'
• crime: 'crime', 'crimes', 'criminal', 'criminally', 'criminals', 'decriminalization', 'decriminalizations', 'decriminalize', 'decriminalized', 'decriminalizes', 'decriminalizing'
• environment: 'environment', 'environmental', 'environmentalism', 'environmentalisms', 'environmentalist', 'environmentalists', 'environmentally', 'environments'
• religion: 'faith', 'god', 'prayer', 'religion'
• health: 'health', 'healthful', 'healthfully', 'healthfulness', 'healthfulnesss', 'healthier', 'healthiest', 'healthily', 'healthiness', 'healthinesss', 'healths', 'healthy', 'unhealthful', 'unhealthier', 'unhealthiest', 'unhealthy'
• terror: 'terror', 'terrorism', 'terrorisms', 'terrorist', 'terrorists', 'terrorize', 'terrorized', 'terrorizes', 'terrorizing', 'terrors'
• war: 'war', 'warrior', 'warriors', 'wars'
• economy: 'economic', 'economical', 'economically', 'economics', 'economicss', 'economy', 'economys', 'microeconomics', 'microeconomicss', 'socioeconomic', 'uneconomic', 'uneconomical'
• jobs: 'jobs'
• business: 'agribusiness', 'agribusinesses', 'agribusinesss', 'business', 'businesses', 'businesslike', 'businessman', 'businessmans', 'businessmen', 'businesss', 'businesswoman', 'businesswomans', 'businesswomen'
• drugs: 'drugs', 'narcotics'
• inflation: 'inflation'
• climate: 'climate'
• science: 'science', 'sciences', 'scientific', 'scientifically', 'scientist', 'scientists'
• gun: 'gun', 'gunfire', 'gunman', 'guns', 'handgun', 'rifle', 'shotgun'
• tech: 'biotechnology', 'biotechnologys', 'technical', 'technological', 'technologically', 'technologies', 'technologist', 'technologists', 'technology', 'technologys'
• military: 'military'
• security: 'security'
• housing: 'housing'
• pollution: 'pollution'

The dictionary file used is a standard file among Linux systems, and the version used was provided with version 7.1-1 of the Ubuntu 'wamerican' package. Two extra phrases, which do not appear in the dictionary file, are added to the list: 'civil rights' (under the 'racism' keyword) and 'natural resources' (under the 'natural resources' theme).

This survey focuses on a variety of social and political issues with an emphasis on the Reagan presidency and the drug problem in the United States. Respondents were asked if they approved or disapproved of Reagan's handling of the presidency, what had been Reagan's greatest successes and failures as president, what grade the respondent would give the Reagan administration for it's handling over the past eight years of such problems as unemployment, inflation, poverty, crime, and improving the quality of public education. In addition, respondents were asked if they agreed or disagreed with a series of statements regarding Reagan's policies and performance, and what changes they perceived as a result of the Reagan presidency in areas such as military power, federal spending, and United States influence in the world. Topics covered in the series of questions relating to drugs include legalization of cocaine, the respondent's degree of concern about various problems relating to illegal drugs, if illegal drugs were a problem in the respondent's general neighborhood, high school, and workplace, mandatory drug testing, and various proposed measures to reduce the drug problem. Respondents also were asked their preference for presidential candidates George Bush or Michael Dukakis and the strength of their support. Background information on respondents includes political alignment, 1984 presidential vote choice, education, age, religion, marital status, household composition, labor union membership, race, income, and state/region of residence.

Research on presidential agenda setting has rarely attempted to simultaneously assess the ability of the president to influence the policy agendas of the mass media and the public. This is primarily due to the lack of time-refined measures of public issue attention. With advances in technology, information about Internet search engine behavior can provide an indication of the level of interest the public has over time about specific issues. Using Google Trends weekly data about public search interest levels, this project contrasts dynamic attention to several economic issues: unemployment, recession, and inflation. The vector autoregression analyses performed suggest the president does not have the capacity to directly guide public attention, nor does the president have the capacity to indirectly guide public attention through the media. There is some indication that the president can indirectly guide public attention by influencing actual economic conditions, and that the president is responsive to attention from the mass media and the public. The moving-average representation analyses indicate that an increase in presidential attention has the potential to produce a small contemporaneous increase in either mass media or public attention to some economic issues. The duration of these positive shifts in mass media or public attention are all very brief, indicating the president has a limited capacity through either direct or indirect leadership to sustain the attention other actors in the political system place on the specific issues studied. Strong evidence in all three of the issue areas studied supports that mass media attention and public attention are closely related.

This study is part of a continuing series of monthly surveys that solicit public opinion on the presidency and on a range of other political and social issues. Each data file in this collection represents a distinct nationwide survey that was conducted during 1977-1979. Approximately 1,000-1,500 randomly selected adults were surveyed by telephone in each poll. Respondents were asked to give their opinions of President Jimmy Carter and his handling of the presidency, foreign policy, and the economy, as well as their views on a range of current social and economic issues. The January 1977 Inauguration Poll (Part 1) asked respondents whether they believed newly inaugurated President Carter would be able to balance the federal budget, contain inflation, reduce unemployment, cut defense spending, restore trust in government, work effectively with Congress, and bring peace to the Middle East. Opinions were also elicited on other current issues, including capital punishment, amnesty for Vietnam draft evaders, building closer ties with China, and United States support for Black majority rule in South Africa. Part 2, June 1978 Education Poll, covered topics concerning the quality of public school education, school busing and racial integration of schools, the effects of single parents, working mothers, and television viewing on a child's education, standardized tests, classroom discipline, and homework. In Part 3, September 1978 Poll on Mid-East Summit Meeting, respondents were asked for their assessment of the chances for peace in the Middle East, their knowledge of the results of the Camp David summit with Egypt, Israel, and the United States, whether Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, or President Carter was most responsible for the agreements, and whether President Carter met their expectations with what he accomplished at the summit. Part 4, December 1978 Poll on China, focused on United States relations with China, the impact closer ties with China may have on relations between the United States and Taiwan, prospects for peace in the Middle East, and United States negotiations with the Soviet Union to cut back on military weapons. In the October 1979 Poll on Current Issues (Part 5) respondents were asked to identify what they believed to be the most important problems facing the country, and whether problems associated with rising prices and energy shortages had affected their lives directly. Background information on respondents includes voter participation history, political party affiliation, political orientation, age, race, religion, education, employment and household income.

In 2023, the unemployment rate of African Americans in the United States stood at 5.5 percent. This was over the national average of 3.6 percent.

The high rate of unemployment

There are many reasons why the unemployment rate among minorities is different than the national average. When it comes to African Americans, a large part of this is due to historical events, such as slavery and the struggle for civil rights, as well as the number of Black families living below the poverty level. Additionally, in 2019, for every 100,000 of the population, there were 2,203 Black men in prison. This high rate of imprisonment can contribute to the unemployment rate for African Americans, since having been in prison can reduce one’s chances of finding a job once released.

Earning differences

African Americans also make less money than other ethnicities in the United States. In 2020, the median weekly earnings of African Americans were 794 U.S. dollars, compared to Asians, who made 1,310 U.S. dollars per week, and whites, who made 1,003 U.S. dollars per week. While the African American unemployment rate may be low, it is clear that much has to change in order to achieve full equality.

U.S. monetary-policy decisions are made by the 12 voting members of the FOMC. Seven of these members inherently represent national-level interests. The remaining members, a rotating group of presidents from the 12 Federal Reserve districts, come instead from sub-national jurisdictions. Does this structure have implications for the monetary policy-making process? We provide novel evidence that regional economic conditions influence the voting behavior of district presidents. Specifically, a regional unemployment rate that is one-percentage-point higher than the national level is associated with an approximately nine-percentage-points higher probability of dissenting in favor of looser policy at the FOMC.

Abstract (en): This poll, fielded December 10-13 2009, is part of a continuing series of monthly surveys that solicit public opinion on the presidency and on a range of other political and social issues. Respondents were asked to give their opinions of President Barack Obama and his handling of the presidency, the federal budget deficit, health care, the situation in Afghanistan, unemployment, global warming, and the economy. Respondents were asked whether the Obama Administration or the Republicans in Congress could be trusted to do a better job handling the economy, health care reform, the situation in Afghanistan and energy policy. Several questions addressed health care including whether respondents supported the health care system being developed by Congress and the Obama Administration, whether they believed health care reform would increase the federal budget deficit, whether government should lower the age requirement for Medicare, and what the respondents' plan preference was for people who are not insured. Noneconomic questions focused on the role of the United States in Afghanistan, confidence in the Obama Administration in the handling of Afghanistan and the Taliban, and the environment. Other questions focused on the topics of health care in the United States, job availability, personal finances as well as opinions on professional golfer Tiger Woods. Demographic variables include sex, age, race, political political philosophy, party affiliation, education level, religious preference, household income, and whether respondents considered themselves to be a born-again Christian. The data contain a weight variable (WEIGHT) that should be used in analyzing the data. The weights were derived using demographic information from the Census to adjust for sampling and nonsampling deviations from population values. Until 2008 ABC News used a cell-based weighting system in which respondents were classified into one of 48 or 32 cells (depending on sample size) based on their age, race, sex, and education; weights were assigned so the proportion in each cell matched the Census Bureau's most recent Current Population Survey. To achieve greater consistency and reduce the chance of large weights, ABC News in 2007 tested and evaluated iterative weighting, commonly known as raking or rim weighting, in which the sample is weighted sequentially to Census targets one variable at a time, continuing until the optimum distribution across variables (again, age, race, sex, and education) is achieved. ABC News adopted rim weighting in January 2008. Weights are capped at lows of 0.2 and highs of 6. ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection: Standardized missing values.; Created online analysis version with question text.; Performed recodes and/or calculated derived variables.; Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.. Persons aged 18 and over living in households with telephones in the contiguous 48 United States. Households were selected by random-digit dialing. Within households, the respondent selected was the youngest adult living in the household who was home at the time of the interview. Please refer to the codebook documentation for more information on sampling. computer-assisted telephone interview (CATI)The data available for download are not weighted and users will need to weight the data prior to analysis.The variables PCTBLACK, PCTASIAN, PCTHISP, MSAFLAG, CSA, CBSA, METRODIV, NIELSMKT, BLOCKCNT, STATE, CONGDIST, and ZIP were converted from character variables to numeric.To preserve respondent confidentiality, codes for the variables FIPS (FIPS County) and ZIP (ZIP Code) have been replaced with blank codes.System-missing values were recoded to -1.The CASEID variable was created for use with online analysis.Several codes in the variable CBSA contain diacritical marks.Value labels for unknown codes were added in variables MSA, CSA, CBSA, COLLEDUC, and METRODIV. The data collection was produced by Taylor Nelson Sofres of Horsham, PA. Original reports using these data may be found via the ABC News Polling Unit Web site and via the Washington Post Opinion Surveys and Polls Web site.

This study explains how the economy affects the foreign policy rhetoric used by American presidents. When economic conditions deteriorate, presidents criticize foreign nations to boost their approval ratings. Presidents use this "diversionary cheap talk" in response to the misery index of unemployment plus inflation, which poses a unique threat to their popularity. They target historical rivals, which make intergroup distinctions most salient. Diversionary cheap talk is most influential for and most frequently used by Democratic presidents, whose non-core constituents prefer hawkish foreign policy but already expect it from Republican presidents. I test the observable implications of the theory with the American Diplomacy Dataset, an original record of 50,000 American foreign policy events between 1851 and 2010 drawn from a corpus of 1.3 million New York Times articles.

This poll is part of a continuing series of monthly surveys that solicit public opinion on the presidency and on a range of other political and social issues. In this poll, respondents were asked their opinions on Ronald Reagan's presidential performance, his handling of the economy and inflation, former President Richard Nixon's role in Watergate, and the impact of inflation upon the respondent's personal finances, job security, and unemployment history, if any. Demographic information on respondents includes race, sex, age, religion, and educational level.

Data extract and Stata do file to reproduce the analyses presented in the paper "Residential Context and Voting for the Far Right: The Impact of Immigration and Unemployment on the 2017 French Presidential Election"

This poll, fielded April 5-12, 2010, is a part of a continuing series of monthly surveys that solicits public opinion on the presidency and on a range of other political and social issues. Respondents were asked whether they approved of the way that Barack Obama was handling his job as president, the economy, health care, and the federal budget deficit, what they liked best and least about Obama, whether they thought things in the country were going in the right direction, and what they thought was the most important problem facing the country. Information was collected on whether respondents approved or disapproved of the way Congress was handling its job, whether they approved or disapproved of the way their representative in Congress was handling their job, whether they had a favorable or unfavorable opinion of President Obama, how respondents would rate the national economy, and who they thought was mostly to blame for the state of the national economy. Respondents were queried on whether they thought that the government's stimulus package made the economy better or worse, whether they thought that the country needed a third political party, whether they would rather have a smaller government with fewer services or a bigger government providing more services, how they felt things were going in Washington, DC, whether they thought the federal government should spend money to create jobs even if it means increasing the budget deficit, and whether they would rather reduce the federal budget deficit or cut taxes. Respondents were also asked who they thought was to blame for the current federal budget deficit, whether they thought providing government money to banks and other financial institutions was necessary to get the economy out of a recession, whether they had a favorable or unfavorable opinion of the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, John McCain, George Bush, Ron Paul, Glen Beck, and Sarah Palin. Information was collected on what political figure the respondents admired most, whether they thought Sarah Palin would have the ability to be an effective president, whether they thought President Obama understands the need and problems of people like themselves, whether respondents thought he was more of a liberal, a moderate, or a conservative, whether they thought his policies were moving the country more towards socialism, whether they thought he favored a particular race over another, and whether they thought the Obama Administration had raised or lowered taxes for most Americans. Respondents were asked whether they thought that the federal government should require nearly all Americans to have health insurance, whether they thought it would be a good idea to raise income taxes on households that make more than $250,000 a year in order to help provide health insurance for people who do not already have it, whether they approved or disapproved of requiring health insurance companies to cover anyone who applies regardless of whether they have an existing medical condition, and whether they thought that the programs such as Social Security and Medicare are worth the cost of those programs for taxpayers. Respondents were queried on whether they thought legal immigration into the United States should be kept at its presents level, increased, or decreased, how serious a problem they thought illegal immigration was, whether they thought that global warming was causing a serious environmental problem, whether they thought gay couples should be allowed to marry, whether they thought abortion should be legal, whether they thought gun control law should be made more strict, what socialism means to them, and whether they thought it was ever justified for citizens to take violent action against the government. Respondents were also asked a number of questions about the Tea Party movement, including how much have they heard about it, whether they had a favorable opinion of it, whether they supported it, and whether they thought the Tea Party movement generally reflected the views of most Americans. Finally, respondents were asked if they were ever active in a political campaign, whether they purchased gold bars or coins in the past year, what political party they usually vote for, what news network they watched most, how concerned were they that they or someone in their household would lose their job in the next year, whe

This Gallup poll seeks the opinions of Canadians on various topics. Included in the discussion are questions about problems facing the country and their solutions, issues involving unemployment, US presidential elections, political party preference, and ways to preventwar. Respondents were also asked questions so that they could be grouped according to geographic, demographic, and social variables. Topics of interest include: alcohol consumption; world conflicts; personal savings; John Diefenbaker, voting behaviour; neutral and non neutral countries; federal elections; power of the Provinces; immigration; and union membership. Basic demographics variables are also included.