Voters Embarrassed by our Politicians

Voters Are Much More Embarrassed by Political Class Than By Arizona
Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Washington Post political columnist Dana Milbank recently wrote a column about Arizona’s response to illegal immigration and called it a “pariah state.” However, voters nationwide are far more worried about the nation’s Political Class than about Arizona’s response to illegal immigration.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 26% of voters are embarrassed by Arizona and its behavior. Sixty-two percent (62%) are not.

However, 59% are embarrassed by the nation’s Political Class and its behavior. Twenty-three percent (23%) are not.

Seventy-eight percent (78%) of Republicans are embarrassed by the Political Class, along with 63% of unaffiliated voters. Democrats are closely divided on the question.

Overall, by a three-to-one margin, voters see the Political Class as a greater threat to the nation than laws like the one passed recently in Arizona. Sixty-four percent (64%) see the Political Class as the bigger threat, while 20% say the opposite.

Forty-three percent (43%) of Democrats see the Political Class as a bigger threat, while 36% of those in the president’s party point to Arizona. Republicans and unaffiliated voters overwhelmingly see the Political Class as the bigger threat.

In the survey, the term “Political Class” is not defined (see question wording).

The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on July 12-13, 2010 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Scott Rasmussen has often made the case that the Political Class debate over whether Americans want to be governed from the left or right misses the more fundamental point.
In his new book, In Search of Self-Governance , Rasmussen says, “Both perspectives are wrong. The American people don’t want to be governed from the left, the right or the center. The American people want to govern themselves.” He adds that “the gap between Americans who want to govern themselves and politicians who want to rule over them may be as big today as the gap between the colonies and England during the 18th century.”

In Search of Self-Governance , is available at Rasmussen Reports and Amazon.com.

Rasmussen Reports has documented the wide gap between perceptions of the Political Class and Mainstream voters. To measure this gap, the firm has created a Political Class Index based upon three polling questions. Mainstream voters tend to trust the wisdom of the crowd more than the wisdom of politicians and are skeptical of the government and its relationship with big business.
Only 12% of Mainstream voters are embarrassed by Arizona’s behavior. Among the Political Class, however, 72% find Arizona embarrassing.

Seventy-eight percent (78%) of Mainstream voters are embarrassed by the behavior of the Political Class. Not surprisingly, only 10% of the Political Class share that view.

Voters by a two-to-one margin oppose the U.S. Justice Department’s decision to challenge the legality of Arizona’s new immigration law in federal court. Sixty-one percent (61%), in fact, favor passage of a law like Arizona’s in their own state, up six points from two months ago.

Sixty-four percent (64%) believe the federal government by failing to enforce immigration law is more to blame for the controversy over Arizona’s law than state officials are for passing it.

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