Climate change is the top security concern in a poll conducted by the Washington-based Pew Research Center, followed by Islamist terrorism and cyber attacks while respondents in a growing number of countries worried about the power and influence of the United States.From Reuters no less.
Seventy percent of Americans said they support a single-payer or Medicare for All health insurance system — including 85 percent of registered Democrats and 52 percent of registered Republicans. Compare these numbers to 2014, when only 21 percent of Americans thought we should have a single-payer system.
The number of Americans who want to eliminate the private insurance industry and replace it with a single universal public program has more than tripled in just four years.…
Similarly, according to the Reuters poll, 79 percent of Democrats and 41 percent of Republicans say they support tuition-free college, amounting to 60 percent overall. It’s hard to find earlier polling data on this subject because it wasn’t even a widely discussed political topic prior to Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign — despite the fact that college tuition has more than doubled in the last 30 years, and the student debt crisis has consequently spiraled out of control.
Sanders’s campaign put the idea on the map. Hillary Clinton responded to this pressure from her left by drafting a watered-down version of Bernie’s universal proposal. But the cat was out of the bag, despite establishment Democrats’ best efforts to shove it back in. Now a majority of Americans believe that we should have free public education....Jacobin
To obtain this information, the research and data firm YouGov surveyed 23,000 people aged 16 and over. Two of the survey’s findings included that 59 percent of total Americans would rather live in a capitalist country, with 34 percent preferring a socialist nation.
When focusing on millennials, the survey revealed 44 percent of those surveyed would rather live in a socialist nation, compared to 42 percent who would prefer a capitalist country. The socialist movement saw an increase in youth following during Senator Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign, as he advertised a platform of “Democratic Socialism.”
A majority of Americans are dissatisfied with President Donald Trump’s response to the violence that erupted last Saturday in Charlottesville, Virginia, according to a new poll conducted by the PBS NewsHour, NPR and Marist Poll....PBS
Only around half of young Europeans think of democracy as the best form of government, a new survey has revealed, while three-quarters see the EU as more of an economic pact rather than a group of nations sharing core European values.
The YouGov survey, the results of which were published on Thursday, was commissioned by the German TUI Foundation, which promotes dialogue on European issues. Between February and March, it polled 6,000 people aged between 16 and 26 from France, Britain, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, and Spain.
Overall, only 52 percent of the respondents saw democracy as the best form of government. That figure was higher in Germany (62 percent) and Greece (66 percent), the birthplace of democracy, while France, Poland, and Italy were most skeptical (42, 45, and 42 percent, respectively). The latter three countries are home to strong populist, nationalist movements, some of which have been described as far-right.
Additionally, 76 percent saw the EU as more of an economic alliance than a group of countries with common cultural interests (30 percent). A mere seven percent described those values as “religion and Christian culture.”
“The value-based European cohesive forces have for a long time been taken for granted,” said Thomas Ellerbeck, the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the TUI Foundation. “The European Youth Study shows that this apparently self-evident condition no longer applies.”…Post Modernity?
A HuffPost/YouGov survey finds 51 percent of Americans support the president's decision to order the airstrikes in retaliation for a chemical attack last week that killed civilians in northern Syrian.
Thirty-two percent of Americans are opposed to the strikes and 17 percent are uncertain.
Among Trump voters, 83 percent support the president's decision, while just 11 percent oppose it.
President Vladimir Putin is viewed as the Russians’ preference for reducing corruption; fewer Russians now than four years ago believe Putin is personally corrupt, or benefits from the corruption of his cronies and subordinates.Sometime ago Putin appointed and "honest cop" in charge of a new anti-corruption drive, making his agency independent and giving him free rein to conduct investigations. Since then a number of high-profile political leaders and other powerful people have been arrested for corruption.
A strong plurality of Americans believe that globalization has sidelined them, but has been good for the US economy overall. So, how do they react? They want the government to help them out: massive majorities of Americans believe the government should make college tuition-free and provide healthcare to all people. At the same time they think everyone is whiny: majorities (or strong pluralities) believe that liberals, conservatives, and young people complain too much....
Americans, worried that globalization is making everyone, but them, rich, thinks the government should make things better for them: free college and healthcare. ” Should the government make college tuition-free?” 67 percent agree and 27 percent disagree; 82 percent of Democrats agree and 47 percent of Republicans. ” Should the government pursue a universal health care system guaranteeing health care to all people?” 76 percen t agree and 19 percent disagree; 90 percent of Democrats agree and 61 percent of Republicans.Predictwise
At this point it makes for Americans to ignore the capricious polls, and simply vote their conscious on Election Day. The numbers in the polls don't add up to the significance the polling conclusions convey.Statistical Ideas
The US Dornsife/LA Times survey approaches polling slightly differently than others. For one, the opinions of participants are weighted based on how certain they are. Someone who is only 60 percent sure of their vote will count for less than someone who is 100 percent sure.
The Daybreak poll also relies on the same group of people.…Sputnik
Despite this, it is important to remember that elections are not about the input of the nation; they are about the outcome of a select few states. So long as California votes solidly democratic and Oklahoma solidly republican, there is no need to factor them into national calculations that skew the results towards the middle.
In this, I challenge voters to do one thing when assessing the state of the presidential race: stop reading the national polls. Such that we have a democratic process rooted in statewide results, it only seems fitting that we exclusively value statewide polls when prognosticating the state of the 2016 election.…
The source claims the non-commercial organization "had received most of its foreign financing from the United States"…
A Justice Ministry source told TASS that a random check carried out by the ministry’s Moscow branch had established that the Levada Center was financed by foreign sources and was involved in political activities in the territory of Russia in the interests of its foreign sponsors. The center prepares and distributes by means of modern information technologies their opinion on decisions passed by Russian bodies of state power and their policy and forms socio-political views and convictions.
"The inspection revealed that the Analytical Center of Yuri Levada …had received a large part of its funds from the United States, including a grant from the University of Wisconsin - Madison, which is curated by the U.S. Department of Defense," the source said.…
Abstract:
The 2016 US presidential nominee Donald Trump has broken with the policies of previous Republican Party presidents on trade, immigration, and war, in favor of a more nationalist and populist platform. Using detailed Gallup survey data for a large number of American adults, I analyze the individual and geographic factors that predict a higher probability of viewing Trump favorably and contrast the results with those found for other candidates. The results show mixed evidence that economic distress has motivated Trump support. His supporters are less educated and more likely to work in blue collar occupations, but they earn relative high household incomes, and living in areas more exposed to trade or immigration does not increase Trump support. There is stronger evidence that racial isolation and less strictly economic measures of social status, namely health and intergenerational mobility, are robustly predictive of more favorable views toward Trump, and these factors predict support for him but not other Republican presidential candidates.
SSRNNumber of Pages in PDF File: 24
The director of the Russian polling center VTSIOM says the country's upcoming elections will see the battle of two polticial agendas: patriotic, reresented by United Russia, and socio-economic, represented by the liberal opposition…Russia Insider
