These days, political turmoil isn’t a one-way street.

President Obama’s mediocre approval ratings and the Democrats’ internal battling over the details of the health care reform plan are the obvious headline-grabbers, but the opposition party has troubles of its own.

Just 15% of Republicans who plan to vote in 2012 state primaries say the party’s representatives in Congress have done a good job of representing GOP values. Seventy-three percent (73%) say Republicans in Congress have lost touch with their voters throughout the nation.

In New Jersey, Republicans once seemed headed toward an unlikely statewide win, thanks largely to the unpopularity of incumbent Democratic Governor Jon Corzine. Now it appears the governor’s race is a toss-up and may come down to turnout and how much support an independent candidate can hold onto.

The good news for Republicans is that for the first time in recent years, voters trust them more than Democrats on all 10 key electoral issues regularly tracked by Rasmussen Reports.

The Republican advantage over Democrats increased to five points this week in the Generic Congressional Ballot. Forty-two percent (42%) would vote for their district’s Republican congressional candidate while 37% would opt for his or her Democratic opponent.

There’s been a shake-up, too, in the early rankings of Republican presidential hopefuls. Nationally, 29% of Republican voters now say former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee is their pick to represent the GOP in the 2012 presidential campaign, while 24% prefer former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and 18% like former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. These numbers reflect an improvement for Huckabee since July when the three candidates were virtually even. Huckabee’s gain appears to be Palin’s loss as Romney’s support has barely changed.

If the choice for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012 comes down to a choice between Huckabee and Romney, Huckabee has a slight edge among likely GOP voters. In the eyes of the political Left, Palin is perhaps America’s most visible national Republican, but she loses handily in face-to-face march-ups with Huckabee and Romney.

Despite content concerns nationwide about the health care reform plan proposed by the president and congressional Democrats, Republicans are losing on the public relations front. A plurality (42%) of voters say Republicans are opposed to the plan for partisan reasons only. Thirty-five percent (35%) disagree and say GOP opposition is due to the contents of the plan.

The Senate Finance Committee’s just-completed version of the health care reform plan brought more details to the fore, but only 42% of voters nationwide now support the effort. Fifty-four percent (54%) are opposed. Rasmussen Reports is tracking support for the health care proposal on a weekly basis and will have updated results on Monday morning.

Forty-nine percent (49%) believe that passing no health care reform bill this year would be better than passing the plan currently working its way through Congress. That’s down five points from August. Thirty-nine percent (39%) say the current effort is better than doing nothing.

The Senate Finance Committee version of the plan alone weighs in at 1,500 pages, and legislators are already busy arguing over what it says and revising it. In spite of this continuing, confusing legislative process, voters still believe strongly that they understand the overall health care reform proposal better than Congress. Fifty-three percent (53%) of voters rate their own understanding of the plan as good or excellent, but just 31% say the same of Congress.

One of the details voters like is making health insurance companies subject to anti-trust regulations. Sixty-five percent (65%) say that’s a good idea. Virtually the same number (66%) say free market competition between insurance companies will do more than government regulation to reduce health care costs.

Speaking of regulation, the Obama administration and the Federal Reserve Board this week both moved a step closer to overseeing compensation at major banks and bailed-out financial firms, but most Americans have reservations about how far the government should go.

Still, 57% of Americans say the federal government should place limits on how much banks charge when customers overdraw their bank accounts. However, most Americans say banks should be allowed to charge a higher amount to customers who frequently overdraw their account.

One-out-of-two Americans (50%) continue to lack confidence in the U.S. banking system. Despite Federal Reserve promises to keep inflation under control and interest rates down, Americans remain highly concerned about inflation and lack confidence in the Fed. Fifty-three percent (53%) also expect interest rates to be higher a year from now.

Time Magazine refers to it as the administration's "stealth stimulus," pumping more government money into the economy without packaging it as a politically unpopular second economic stimulus plan. Fifty percent (50%) of voters like the president’s idea of a one-time $250 payment to seniors who for the first time in years won't be getting a cost of living increase in their Social Security checks because inflation's down. When voters learn that the plan is expected to cost taxpayers $13 billion, support drops.

Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. announced this past week that the federal government will no longer prosecute those who use marijuana for medical purposes or those who sell the drug to them. Sixty-three percent (63%) of Americans believe patients should be allowed to smoke marijuana if it is prescribed by a doctor, but they have mixed feelings about whether the government should pursue criminal action against those who use pot in violation of federal law.

For the first time this year, a plurality (48%) of U.S. voters think it’s unlikely that the Guantanamo prison camp for suspected terrorists will be closed by January as the president has repeatedly vowed.

Obama whose approval ratings have largely been stable for weeks in the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll had a bit rougher ride over the past few days. It’ll be interesting to see if these slightly more negative ratings are a new trend or just a bump in the road.

It’s been another week of mixed signals on the economic front. In September, Americans expressed their highest level of financial security in nearly a year, according to the latest edition of the Country Financial Security Index. Both the Rasmussen Consumer and Investor Indexes were down this week but still have made double-digit gains from the first of the year.

In other polls last week:

-- Thirty-eight percent (38%) of voters say cutting the federal budget deficit in half in the next four years should be the Obama administration's top priority, while 23% say health care reform is most important. Rasmussen Reports has been tracking the public’s response to the priorities listed by the president in a speech to Congress shortly after he took office. Deficit reduction has been the top priority all year.

-- Voters are expressing a little more unhappiness with the president’s handling of ethics issues. Ethics and government corruption have now moved past the economy to be voters’ number one concern.

-- Just 25% of voters nationwide favor a proposal that would allow pet owners to deduct up to $3,500 for "qualified pet-care expenses" for household pets.

-- Thirty-nine percent (39%) of Republican voters have a favorable opinion of the party’s national chairman, Michael Steele, while 27% regard him very unfavorably. However, 35% don’t know what they think of Steele.

-- The contest for the 2010 Republican Senate nomination in Florida is a little closer this month, but Governor Charlie Crist still holds a 14-point lead over former state House Speaker Marco Rubio. The fact that Crist has fallen below 50% in a primary against a lesser-known opponent suggests potential vulnerability.

-- Both Crist and Rubio lead their likely 2010 Democratic opponent, Representative Kendrick Meek, by double digits.

-- Republican hopeful Bill McCollum now has a double-digit lead over his likeliest Democratic competitor, Alex Sink, in Florida’s 2010 race for governor. The race between the two is little changed from June.

-- The 2010 U.S. Senate race in Illinois is now a dead heat between Republican hopeful Mark Kirk and Democratic State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias.

-- In a generic ballot match-up for the 2010 governor election in Illinois, a Democratic candidate holds a 43% to 37% edge over a Republican. Another 20% of voters there are not sure which party’s candidate they would choose.

-- John Oxendine, Georgia’s fire and insurance commissioner, still has a 15-point lead over his nearest competitor in next year’s battle to be the state Republican nominee for governor. The 2010 Democratic Primary race for governor in Georgia remains Roy Barnes’ to lose, but State Attorney General Thurbert Baker has moved 10 points closer over the last two months.

-- For the second straight week, 34% of voters say the United States is heading in the right direction. The finding is seven points higher than the week Obama took office and up 13 points from the week he was elected president in early November.

-- Most Americans favor allowing casino gambling in their own state, even as they believe that the overall impact of such gambling on society is negative.

-- Who buys a lottery ticket?

-- Sixty-eight percent (68%) of Americans say one or both parents of six-year-old Falcon Heene should be criminally prosecuted if the "Balloon Boy" incident is proven to be a hoax, but most don't think they should lose custody of their children.

-- Eighty percent (80%) say Americans pay too much attention to sensational stories like the “Balloon Boy” rather than focusing on news that really impacts the way they live.
What They Told Us: Reviewing Last Week’s Key Polls

-- For some folks, this may be the biggest news of the week. Polling conducted over the first weekend of the Major League Baseball Championship Series found that 41% of baseball fans expect the New York Yankees to win their 27th World Series this year. Seventeen percent (17%) think the Philadelphia Phillies will repeat as champs. Sixteen percent (16%) picked the Dodgers, and just seven percent (7%) thought the Los Angeles Angels would emerge victorious.

Check for the latest, regularly updated numbers on our home page and keep up with our daily Presidential Tracking Poll. Premium Members get access to more data, a morning briefing from Scott Rasmussen and an advance look at key findings.

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