What They Told Us: Reviewing Last Week’s Key Polls - Week Ending May 13, 2017

Given the passage of the Republican bill to repeal and replace Obamacare in the House last week, one might have thought that health care would dominate the headlines this week. But news moves fast in the Trump administration.

On Tuesday, President Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, who was leading an investigation into Russia’s connection to the 2016 presidential election. Trump in an interview Thursday said he had been considering firing the “showboat” Comey for months, and that the investigation into the “made up” Russian story played into his decision. Rasmussen Reports will release new survey findings about Comey’s firing early next week.

Voters are more convinced that outside forces cost Hillary Clinton the election, but despite the finger-pointing at Comey as one of those forces, Comey is more trusted than Clinton.

Late last year, 40% of voters who felt outside factors cost Clinton the election said Comey’s announcement that the FBI was reopening its investigation into Clinton’s emails was the biggest factor. Twenty-one percent (21%) said Russian interference in the U.S. election was the most likely reason for Clinton’s defeat.

Most disagreed with Comey’s decision last year not to seek a criminal indictment of Clinton for her mishandling of classified information while secretary of State, and 60% agreed with his decision to go public about the FBI’s reopening of the Clinton investigation just before Election Day.

Speaking of Russia, disdain among U.S. voters for Russian leader Vladimir Putin has reached a new high.

As tensions rise with North Korea and Russia, Americans suspect a nuclear war is coming, but they’re also more confident than they have been in years that the United States will still be the world’s dominant power at the end of the century.

As President Trump and the Republicans’ new health care plan makes its way through the Senate, voters admit they like the health care they’re currently receiving but still see the need to fix Obamacare.

Voters tend to believe it’s the government’s job to make sure Americans have health care, even though they doubt the government will do it fairly and question whether taxpayers can afford it.

Support for a single-payer health care system reached a new high despite voters’ views that it will increase health care costs and hurt the quality of care.

Once hot sentiments on the direction of the economy and personal finances following President Trump’s inauguration are now cooling, and so is consumer spending.

While most Americans still say they know someone out of a job, that number has fallen to its lowest level yet, as has the number who know someone who has given up on the job market. But even though the national unemployment rate has fallen to a 10-year low, adults aren’t totally convinced the job market is better than it was a year ago.

Tomorrow is Mother’s Day, but few Americans see it as the nation's most important holiday, and the number who consider motherhood the most important job for a woman is at its lowest level yet.

In other surveys last week:

-- President Donald Trump signed an executive order that seeks to overturn the Johnson Amendment barring tax-exempt organizations like churches from participating in politics or political campaigns. Many worry this blurs the line between church and state, but most voters feel churches and other similar organizations should have a proverbial seat at the political table.

-- Thirty-nine percent (39%) of voters said the country is heading in the right direction for the week ending May 4.

-- Voters are not likely to say the average congressional representative shares their views. They’re not even convinced their own representative does.

-- President Trump raged against the system and anyone or anything that stood in his path to the White House in 2016. One of the biggest obstacles Trump overcame during that election was the constant drumbeat of a large majority of major media polls that showed him losing the race from wire to wire. That was the topic of this week’s Rasmussen Minute.

Visit the Rasmussen Reports home page for the latest current polling coverage of events in the news. The page is updated several times each day.

Remember, if it's in the news, it's in our polls.