The latest Rasmussen trust numbers are out, after what was an odd formatting thing that made me decide to stop reporting them until things settled down. Short version: Rasmussen has replaced Abortion with Afghanistan in the top ten category; the GOP won all ten, including that perennial heartbreaker Government Ethics; and the numbers nonetheless show a shift away from July’s numbers, mostly because July’s numbers were uniformly awful for the Democrats.
| Aug-10 | Jul-10 | ||||||
| Issue | Dem | GOP | Diff | Dem | GOP | Diff | Shift |
| Health Care | 40% | 48% | (8) | 40% | 51% | (11) | 3 |
| Education | 40% | 41% | (1) | 41% | 43% | (2) | 1 |
| Social Security | 38% | 44% | (6) | 37% | 46% | (9) | 3 |
| Abortion | 36% | 46% | (10) | ||||
| Economy | 39% | 47% | (8) | 39% | 48% | (9) | 1 |
| Taxes | 36% | 52% | (16) | 36% | 52% | (16) | – |
| Iraq | 40% | 43% | (3) | 36% | 45% | (9) | 6 |
| Nat’l Security | 37% | 49% | (12) | 34% | 51% | (17) | 5 |
| Gov’t Ethics | 38% | 40% | (2) | 33% | 29% | 4 | (6) |
| Immigration | 35% | 44% | (9) | 32% | 47% | (15) | 6 |
| Afghanistan | 36% | 43% | (7) | ||||
Do these for a while and you get used to the concept of the ‘dead-cat bounce.’ The Democrats get that a lot in this particular long-term survey; it’s been a long two years for them since the halcyon days of 2008. I assume that the switching of Afghanistan and abortion as top issues is ‘permanent;’ it’d be interesting to see how that issue will track now that it’s not as much in the news, but they call it a Top Ten list for a reason.
Moving along: do not be surprised when Government Ethics slips next month. It defaults to Democrats being trusted more; and it will probably continue to do so in months where Democrats are not actually being indicted. I don’t know whether that’s a feature of the poll or of the electorate, and frankly there’s not much one can do in either case except to steadily indict more corrupt Democrats. Unfortunately, there’s a regular supply of those.
Moe Lane