Government statistics released Friday showed that the economy added 112,000 jobs in November, a number many view as disappointing. What do Americans think about the job situation?
There is no indication in Gallup's polling that Americans have become dramatically more positive about the job situation in recent months, although there are signs of slight improvement. We ask Americans each month if "now is a good time to find a quality job." The numbers have fluctuated some from month to month, but a majority -- sometimes a large majority -- of Americans have consistently answered that question in the negative.
Still, in November, 38% of employed Americans or those unemployed and looking for work said it was a good time to be looking -- the highest such measure (by one percentage point) since the end of the dot-com boom. In broader terms, over the last several months this job measure has been slightly higher than it was earlier this year, or in 2003 or most of 2002.
Still, the bottom line remains: A majority of Americans continue to say that now is not a good time to be looking for work.
Steroids and Major League Baseball are back in the news. Do any of the recent revelations come as a surprise to Americans?
I don't think American baseball fans are at all surprised by the recent news about steroids, including a report in the San Francisco Chronicle that New York Yankees star Jason Giambi admitted using steroids in grand jury testimony last year, and that San Francisco Giants superstar Barry Bonds admitted using a performance-enhancing substance, which he says he did not know was a steroid at the time he used it.
Last March, 64% of baseball fans said their best guess was that Bonds had taken steroids. More generally, in a November 2003 poll, 33% of fans said that half or more of all baseball players take steroids.
The key issue facing Major League Baseball and the players' association is whether to modify the league's current drug testing policy. The precise way in which players are currently tested for steroids is complicated, but polling indicates that baseball fans say yes (91%) when asked whether players should be tested for steroids or other performance-enhancing drugs.
We are now updating baseball fans' perceptions of the steroid situation, and will have the latest public opinion on this potentially explosive issue next week.
The White House and Defense Department announced last week that the number of troops in Iraq will be increased -- with some troops scheduled to come home told they must stay there, and about 1,500 new troops scheduled to be sent over. How are Americans likely to react to the news?
There is no evidence that Americans want U.S. troops to be brought home from Iraq. An Associated Press poll released last week showed 71% of Americans want troops to stay in Iraq until the country is stabilized, while only 28% advocate bringing the troops home immediately.
At the same time, Gallup Poll measures taken over the last year and a half suggest that Americans aren't wildly enthusiastic about sending more troops to Iraq, either. In September, the last time we updated this measure, only 21% of Americans said that the United States should send more troops, while 35% said the number of troops should remain roughly where it is, and 39% said that all or some troops should be withdrawn.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld announced he is remaining in President George W. Bush's Cabinet, a counterpoint to the many other Cabinet resignations that have been announced since the president's re-election. Is Rumsfeld a popular Cabinet member?
Rumsfeld's image is about midrange for political figures, neither great nor poor. Fifty-one percent of respondents to a mid-November poll expressed a favorable opinion of Rumsfeld, and 39% expressed an unfavorable opinion. Rumsfeld's ratings have shown a steady decline since Gallup first asked about him in July 2002 -- from 67% favorable in July 2002, to 61% in September 2002, to 58% in February 2003, to 53% in September 2003. This isn't necessarily surprising. Bush's job approval ratings also declined over this same time period, as the rally effect associated with the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks dissipated and the Iraq war became more of a controversial administration policy.
The most popular member of the Bush Cabinet, by far, is departing Secretary of State Colin Powell.
A Census report last week showed that more and more American men and women are delaying the age at which they get married. How does this fit with the attitudes of the average American?
There are undoubtedly a number of complex reasons why young people are not getting married as early as they used to, including the fact that women tend to focus more on their careers now than they did a few decades ago. But there is little question that one important contributor to this trend has been the increasing tendency for younger couples to live together without, as they used to say, "benefit of clergy."
A Gallup Poll conducted two years ago showed that 37% of Americans who were married at the time of the interview said they had lived together with their spouse before getting married. That percentage was up from only 19% in a 1988 Gallup Poll.
We haven't asked adults directly if they approve or disapprove of living together before marriage, but the Gallup Youth Survey recently found that 69% of teens aged 13 to 17 approve of the practice. We also know that according to a May 2004 survey, only 36% of adults think it is morally wrong for an unmarried man and woman to have sex. That percentage is down from 42% in 2001. A separate question asked in 1969 found that 62% of Americans thought it was wrong for a man and a woman to have sex before marriage.
These questions focus on the morality of premarital cohabitation. But there is also a practical question. Does living together before marriage make the probability of divorce higher or lower if the couple eventually does get married? The public, as of a couple of years ago, has mixed feelings on this issue. Forty percent said cohabiting before marriage makes divorce more likely, while 37% said it makes divorce less likely. The rest had no opinion.
There was a predictably huge difference of opinion on this question between those who had lived together themselves (who felt living together helps prevent divorce) and those who had not lived together (who felt living together leads to a higher probability of divorce).
Thousands of Canadians demonstrated against Bush when he made his first official visit to Canada since becoming president. Do Canadians like the United States less than Americans like Canada?
Canadians are definitely negative about Bush. A May 2004 Canadian Gallup Poll shows that only 23% of Canadians approve of the job Bush is doing as U.S. president. When asked late this summer whom they wanted to win the U.S. presidential election, Canadians opted for John Kerry over Bush by a 66% to 22% margin.
We don't have any Gallup data showing how Americans feel about Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin. Most Americans probably don't know who he is. A February 2003 Gallup Poll asked Americans who the prime minister of Canada was, and at that point only 6% could correctly answer Jean Chrétien.
There are a number of other ways in which the Canadian people differ from the American people. One of the most interesting relates to religion. Canadians are significantly less religious than Americans, at least based on Gallup's survey measures of religiosity.
While 90% of Americans believe in God, only 71% of Canadians say they do. Four in 10 Americans (42%) say they attend church weekly or almost every week, and only 23% of Canadians do. (More than 6 in 10 Canadians say they seldom or never attend church services.) Canadians are also significantly less likely than Americans to say they believe in angels, the devil, in heaven, or hell.
The American religious landscape, by the way, breaks out to be about 23% Catholic, 50% Protestant, 16% other religions, and 10% no religion. Canada's residents are 43% Catholic, 31% Protestant, 10% other religions, and 14% no religion.
Bush has announced that one of his major domestic policy initiatives in his second term will be Social Security privatization. In a nutshell, are Americans for or against this change?
Gallup last asked Americans about Social Security privatization in October 2003. At that time more than 6 in 10 Americans (62%) said they favored a proposal "… that would allow people to put a portion of their Social Security payroll taxes into personal retirement accounts that would be invested in private stocks and bonds." A third opposed the idea.
Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman this past week called for the resignation of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan over the oil-for-food scandal. What are the public's feelings about the United Nations and Annan?
We last asked about Annan almost two years ago (February 2003), and found his rating among Americans to be more positive than negative (31% positive compared with 17% negative), although half of Americans didn't know enough about him to give an opinion.
Even before the reports of this latest scandal, Americans did not express high esteem for the United Nations itself. In February 2004, only 35% of Americans said they thought the United Nations was doing a good job solving problems, while 62% thought it was doing a poor job.
Christmas is a time of celebration and joy for many Americans, yet it is also associated with increasing rates of depression and stress. Is mental health an increasing concern for Americans?
According to Gallup's November 2004 Health poll, there has actually been an increase this year in the percentage of Americans who rate their mental well-being as "excellent" -- from 43% in previous years at this time to 51% this year.
At the same time, there hasn't been much change in other Gallup measures of mental health. About a third of Americans (34%) say there has been a time within the past month when their mental health or emotional well-being was "not good," and another 17% say their mental health has been so bad during the past month that it has caused them to skip participation in normal activities, including work. About 12% of Americans have consulted a mental health professional within the past year.
There's an old saying that "Money doesn't buy happiness," but Gallup's data suggest this adage could truthfully be changed to say, "Money is correlated with mental well-being." There is a direct and fairly strong positive correlation between one's income and one's self-reported mental and emotional well-being. Individuals living in high-income households are more than twice as likely as those living in low-income households to report having excellent mental health.