Photograph by Victor J. Blue/ Bloomberg

Pedestrians carry shopping bags on Fifth Avenue in New York.

The grades are still low, but they’re better than last year.

While Washington policy makers are being blamed for sequestration and the budget impasse, Americans this year are registering improving confidence in their leaders’ ability to “do or to recommend the right thing for the economy,” according to an annual Gallup poll released today.

All four parties — President Barack Obama, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, and Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress — earned higher marks from respondents than last year, with Obama taking the top spot. Gallup conducted telephone interviews with 1,005 adults from April 4-7.

Fifty-seven percent of those polled trusted the president a “great deal” or “fair amount” on the economy, breaking above the 50-percent line for the first time in three years.

Fewer than half of Americans surveyed felt the same about the other officials. Democratic leaders stood at 48 percent, Bernanke at 42 percent and Republicans at 39 percent.

Bernanke’s tally marked his first improvement since 2009, shortly after the Fed embarked on what has become unprecedented quantitative easing that has ballooned the central bank’s balance sheet to $3.2 trillion in efforts to spur the recovery.

The chairman’s term ends Jan. 31, and speculation is that he’ll be succeeded by Vice Chairman Janet Yellen. She’s favored among 65 percent of fund managers polled, according to the results of a survey by International Strategy & Investment Group issued last week. Sixteen percent bet Bernanke would be reappointed.

“Bernanke is generally seen as a powerful force for economic stability in the global financial markets, but this may not be enough for him to be reappointed, particularly if the U.S. economy goes into another economic swoon this spring,” according to the Gallup release.

Thirty-four of 43 economists polled by Bloomberg are projecting a slowing of U.S. growth in the second quarter from the first three months of the year, according to survey results released today.

“A lot of this has to do with where your assumptions are on sequestration,” said Neil Dutta, head of U.S. economics at Renaissance Macro Research LLC in New York. “If you assume that the impact is immediate, as most of us do, then the second quarter will be weak,” with budget cuts contributing to a “choppiness” in the data over the next few months.

Original post is Americans Critical of Economic Stewardship — Though Less So by Political Capital.

Photograph by Marco Longari/AFP via Getty Images

Palestinian militants of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades stand guard on the roof of a building in the West Bank village of Saair on February 25, 2013 during the funeral of Arafat Jaradat, an inmate who died in an Israeli prison.

That’s the percentage of Americans who favor putting more pressure on Palestinians than the Israelis amid the stalled Middle East peace process, according to Gallup.

That compared with 25 percent who said the U.S. should put more pressure on the Israelis, according to the survey, which was conducted Feb. 7-10.

President Barack Obama left last night for Israel in his first trip there since taking office. Obama also plans to visit the West Bank and Jordan.

About one-third of Israelis described Obama’s attitude toward Israel as favorable, compared with 38 percent who said he’s hostile to the nation, according to a survey mentioned in this story by Bloomberg’s Margaret Talev and Jonathan Ferziger.

Original post is Bloomberg by the Numbers: 48 by Political Capital.

Photograph by Hadi Mizban/AP Photo

People gather at the scene of a car bomb attack close to one of the main gates to the heavily-fortified Green Zone, which houses major government offices and the embassies of several countries, including the United States and Britain in Baghdad, Iraq, on March 19, 2013.

Ten years after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, there is a striking similarity in two polls asking the same question.

Was it a mistake?

Fifty-four percent of Americans think the U.S. should have stayed out of Iraq, according to the results of a poll conducted by CBS News and reported today, while 38 percent said taking military action against Tehran was the right thing to do. Many Americans voice skepticism about whether the mission in Iraq was successful — “accomplished,” as then President George W. Bush put it after the initial capture of the capital. Four in 10 think the U.S. succeeded in accomplishing its objectives, but more, 50 percent, say it did not.

This survey of 861 adults was conducted March 1-3, with a possible 3 percentage point margin of error.

It shows a significant shift over time from the 69 percent who told CBS’s pollster in March of 2003 that the U.S. had done the right thing.  Public support waned early in the war, with the public divided by 2004.

Still, opinion has mellowed somewhat — criticism for the conflict peaked in March 2008, when CBS polling found that 62 percent called the war a mistake.

Gallup polling has found pretty much the same thing — the numbers impressively similar: Fifty-three percent of Americans believe their country “made a mistake sending troops to fight in Iraq” and 42 percent say it was not a mistake, Gallup found in its March 7-10 survey.

“Although majorities or near-majorities have viewed the conflict as a mistake continuously since August 2005, the current 53 percent is down from the high point of 63 percent in April 2008, Gallup reported this week.

Its latest survey of 1,022 adults had a possible 4 percentage point margin of error.

The U.S. lost 4,486 military members in the war, and another 32,000 were wounded. Iraq Body Count, a London-based nonprofit, estimates that between 111,762 and 122,224 Iraqi civilians died in the violence touched off by the U.S.-led invasion, as we noted at Bloomberg by the Numbers today.

President Barack Obama withdrew combat forces in December 2011.

And today, as noted earlier today, dozens more died in car bombings around Baghdad aimed at destabilizing the government that the U.S. spent the better part of a decade attempting to stabilize.

Original post is Iraq Ten Years After — ‘Mistake’ Registering Slim Majority in Polls by Political Capital.

Photograph by Uriel Sinai/Getty Images

An Israeli woman and her children stay in a large concrete pipe used as a bomb shelter after a rocket was launched from the Gaza Strip on November 12, 2012 in Netivot, Israel.

That’s the percentage of Americans who say they’re more sympathetic to the Israelis than to the Palestinians amid stalled Middle East peace talks, according to Gallup.

The 64 percent figure ties a 25-year high set in 1991 during the Persian Gulf War, according to Gallup. Twelve percent said they sympathized more with the Palestinians, according to interviews conducted last month.

“Consistent with prior years, Republicans are substantially more likely than Democrats to favor the Israelis, 78% vs. 55%, with the preferences of independents — currently 63% — more closely matching those of Democrats,” Gallup’s Lydia Saad said in a written analysis.

President Barack Obama visits Israel this week, his first trip to the nation as president. Obama said that “all options are on the table” in trying to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons capability, Bloomberg’s Julianna Goldman and Jonathan Ferziger reported.

Original post is Bloomberg by the Numbers: 64 by Political Capital.

Photograph by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Outdoor space heaters wait to be removed by volunteers, employees and contractors from the Service Employees International Union as they work to break down ‘The People’s Camp’ on the National Mall west of the U.S. Capitol.

That’s the approval rating of Congress, according to a Gallup survey conducted March 7-10.

The figure is little changed from a month ago, when Congress had a 15 percent approval rating. The most recent surveys were conducted after automatic budget cuts went into effect March 1.

Congress, divided between a Republican-led House and a Democratic-controlled Senate, continues to have a poor public image even as the labor market improves and household net worth rises.

“Americans are saving less and spending more for purchases such as new automobiles, as household net worth climbs with rising home values and stock indexes surging to record highs. Companies are ramping up hiring, adding 246,000 to private payrolls in February,”  Bloomberg’s Shobhana Chandra and Rich Miller reported yesterday.

Original post is Bloomberg by the Numbers: 13% by Political Capital.

Photograph by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Texas Governor Rick Perry says his first priority as president would be to do away with the new health care law while being interviewed by Google Soapbox at the Iowa State Fair pin this August 15, 2011 file photo in Iowa.

Updated at 3:30 pm EDT

What don’t Rick Perry and Mitt Romney have in common?

Health insurance for their fellow home states’ residents.

It was Perry, the Texas governor who also sought the Republican Party’s presidential nomination last year, who announced last summer that he would reject the health-care exchanges and Medicaid expansion included in President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act.

“The bottom line here is that Medicaid is a failed program,” Perry said in an appearance on Fox News. “To expand this program is not unlike adding a thousand people to the Titanic.”

Yet look what else is sinking:

For the fifth year in a row, Texas ranks No. 1 in Americans lacking health insurance, according to a Gallup-Healthways survey.

More than a quarter of adult Texans — 28.8 percent — lacked coverage in 2012, the highest rate for any state since the survey started in January 2008.

Massachusetts, it goes to figure, has the lowest rate, at 4.5 percent — thanks to another former governor, Romney, who once advocated a mandate there that became less appealing to him in the 2012 presidential election contest.

Nationwide, an average of 16.9 percent of all adults lacked coverage.

While Perry holds out against the Medicaid expansion, other Republican governors — including Florida’s Rick Scott — have started reassessing their opposition to the provision of “Obama-care” that offers states expanded funding and coverage for more people. The Florida Legislature, however, appears to want none of it today.

In Florida, 22.8 percent of all adults were uninsured for health care.

Gallup’s Elizabeth Mendes reports: “Uninsured rates in about half the U.S. remained higher in 2012 than in 2008. Just four states, though, show year-over-year increases every year since 2008 — Rhode Island, New Jersey, California, and New York. And Texas — the state with the highest adult uninsured rate in the country for five years in a row — continues to widen the gap between it and the state with the second-highest uninsured rate in the U.S.”

Results are based on telephone interviews conducted as part of the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index survey throughout 2012, with a random sample of 353,564 adults and a possible margin of error of 1 percentage point.

Original post is Perry’s Titanic Texas: Health Insurance by Political Capital.

Photograph by Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images

Women in New York City.

One third of the people in West Virginia are fat.

It’s the most obese state of all, by the measure of the Gallup organization and Healthways.

Coloradans are the least likely in the nation to be obese — theirs is the only state where fewer than 20 percent of adults are obese.

West Virginia, ranked for the third year running with the highest obesity rate,  33.5 percent, has slimmed down somewhat — down from 35.3 percent obese in 2012.

Seven of the top-10 states are Southern. Eight are politically “red.”

All of the 10 leanest states are Northern or Western. Seven are politically “blue.”

New Jersey is among the 10 least obese states — just noting this, in light of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s remark on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” this week that he feels “svelte” in comparison with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. Florida ranks somewhere in the middle.

The national obesity rate remained steady at 26.2 percent in 2012, compared with 26.1 percent in 2011, but is still higher than the 2008 average of 25.5 percent, according to data collected by the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, with respondents self-reporting their  height and weight, in turn used to calculate Body Mass Index (BMI) scores. Americans with a BMI of 30 or higher are classified as obese. Gallup and Healthways have been tracking Americans’ weight situation daily since January 2008.

Before one wonders if the possible margin of error is a few pizzas, it turns out that this is a pretty big survey: The results come from a random sample of 353,564 adults conducted throughout 2012. The possible margin of error is plus or minus 1 percent.

Original post is National Obesity Index: 26.2% by Political Capital.

Photograph by Pete Marovich/Bloomberg

President Barack Obama departs after speaking to the automatic spending cuts set to kick in.

A couple of things started happening on March 1:

– The so-called “sequestration” of Defense and other discretionary federal spending.

– A five-point slide in President Barack Obama’s approval ratings.

The latest rating of the president’s job performance — 46 percent in the Gallup organization’s tracking of opinion March 1-3 — is a full five points lower than it averaged during the second half of February and six to seven points lower than in late January through early February.

This follows something of a mini-surge on Obama’s approval ratings the month after his re-election, peaking at 58 percent in late December in Gallup’s tracks.

Absent any other obvious factors, the president’s official order of budget sequestration on Friday and 35-minute news conference at the White House speaking of the real pain and economic erosion ahead started the three days of surveys yielding a five-point slide.

Of course, it takes two to sequester federal spending, the executive and the legislative branch, in the agreement that was supposed to be so painful that no one would accept it.

And the president is looking better than Congress in the measures of public opinion. Heading into his State of the Union address, the president had a 52 percent approval rating, Congress a 15 percent approval rating.

Gallup also found that a plurality of Americans, by a margin of 45 to 37 percent, would have preferred to avert that sequestration.

Original post is Obama’s Approval: Sequestered 5% by Political Capital.

Photograph by Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Getty Images

Rep. Sander Levin, D-Mich., makes his way around the Cannon rotunda.

U.S. Rep. Sander Levin, a Democrat from Michigan, recalls his last substantive issue discussion with a Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee.

It was 13 years ago.

He and Bill Thomas, then a Republican congressman from California who served as the committee’s chairman, came to an agreement on a trade deal with China. It required give and take, then compromise, he said in an interview. Levin, 82, hasn’t seen that happen on “truly substantive” legislation since.

The $85 billion in automatic budget cuts that started March 1 — reductions crafted to be so arbitrary and damaging that they would not actually occur — exemplify the dysfunction in Washington that he has seen been building for the last 20 years.

And Levin isn’t alone.

“I see it getting worse before it gets better,” said Rep. Peter King of New York, a Republican. “Too many people in Congress have not been in politics before, and they are not used to the give and take. They don’t understand the necessity of compromise. Ronald Reagan used to take his principles to the table, and make the best deal you can.”

The inability of leaders in Washington to reach an agreement to forestall the cuts, commonly called sequestration, adds to the disillusion Americans express about their government. Only 15 percent of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing, according to a Gallup pollpublished Feb. 19.

See the full report at Bloomberg.com.

Original post is Congressional Dysfunction Breeds Nostalgia for Spirit of Compromise by Political Capital.

Photograph by Jeff Daly/Invision/AP Photo

Actress Eva Longoria participates in an Early Vote Canvass Kickoff in West Palm Beach, Florida.

That was President Barack Obama’s job approval rating among Hispanics in January, according to Gallup.

The figure is close to the 71 percent support Obama received from Hispanic voters in the 2012 election, according to a national exit poll.

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney received 27 percent of the Hispanic vote, one reason he lost to Obama by 5 million votes nationwide and in key states such as Colorado, Florida and Nevada, where Hispanics are more than 20 percent of the population.

“If you’re going to lose Hispanic votes by 44 points — and that is the largest-growing demographic in America — you’re going to consign yourself on a national level of being a minority party in perpetuity,” Peter Wehner, who advised Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, said yesterday on C-Span’s “Washington Journal” program.

Some Republicans say they can begin to improve their party’s poor image among Hispanics by pushing for an overhaul of immigration laws that offers a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Obama wants to enact an immigration plan this year and has sought support from business executives.

A rewrite of immigration laws “is something that we should be able to get done certainly this year, and I’d like to see if we can get it done sooner, in the first half of the year is possible,” Obama said Jan. 30 in an interview with the Spanish-language television station Telemundo.

Original post is Bloomberg by the Numbers: 70 by Political Capital.