Poll Watch: Even Fox News...

It's been about a month since I've reviewed any of the public opinion polls, and the first one I searched for was the Fox News poll from late June.

I'm so glad I started there - because, at least for tonight, I need look no further.

Fox News, the most trusted news as far as the Trump Administration and the Trump family and Trump supporters, uses both land lines and cell phones for their polls, and primarily relies on responses from registered voters.

The poll included some of the standard questions, including how Trump is doing as president (a -6, the difference between the 44% approves and the 50% disapproves). On four key issues, he had a mixed bag: +3 on terrorism, +5 on the economy, -9 on foreign policy and -15 on health care.

The poll also sought approval ratings for key political figures, including the president. Here's how they fared:

• Mike Pence: +5
• Donald Trump: -4
• Hillary Clinton: -17
• James Comey: -1
• Paul Ryan: -8
• Nancy Pelosi: -17
• Robert Mueller: +11
• Chuck Schumer: -9
• Mitch McConnell: -16

Other interesting details?

• More respondents would vote for the Democrat (+6) than the Republican in their district if the election were held now (even though Dems are 0 for 5 in special elections to replace Republicans who left Congress to join the administration). Furthermore, 50% say that Trump is not a factor in their decision to vote for the Democrat. 
• Incompetent' wins the day (+8) over 'competent' when assessing the Trump administration.

McConnell's attempt to fix healthcare has few fans (-27) -- and 'Obamacare' has a higher approval rating (+6) than any of the elected officials noted above.  By a  pretty good margin (+12), people think the Dems would do better on healthcare than the Republicans. 

And there's more bad news on healthcare; here's what voters think should happen with the Affordable Care Act, which Republicans have been voting incessantly to repeal and replace:

• repeal: 28%
• repeal parts of it: 33%
• expand it: 25%
• leave it alone: 12%

My guess is that people, like politicians, want to keep the good stuff, like coverage for pre-existing conditions and dependents until age 26, and the subsidies for premiums, but not the bad stuff, like having to pay for the subsidies and the dependents and the pre-existing conditions.

When it comes to confidence in Congress getting anything important done this year, it's not looking good for the Trump agenda.

• passing tax reform legislation: -37
• repealing and replacing the ACA: -42
• funding major infrastructure projects: -38
• funding the border wall: -71

And about the importance of continuing all of those investigations we keep hearing about? The Trump stuff seems more interesting than the Clinton stuff:

• Russian hacking/interference in the '16 election: +12
• Trump firing Comey/possible interference in the '16 election: +9
• Alleged coordination between the Trump campaign & Russia: +6
• Clinton's email server: -10
• the Clinton 'investigation' vs the Clinton 'matter': -9
• Benghazi: -7

Given the fervent rhetoric surrounding the topics above, and pretty much any topic these days, I thought I'd close with one last result:

By an overwhelming margin -- a +61 -- respondents feel the "level of political debate in the country today" is "overheated and dangerous."

It will be interesting to see if the network formerly known as Fair and Balanced (now calling themselves "Most Watched, Most Trusted") will change how they talk about things, given the responses to their own poll.

25-27 Jun 17 47% 41 4 8