What They Told Us: Reviewing Last Week’s Key Polls - Week Ending September 30, 2017

The United States military and an army of first responder volunteers are working to resupply and stabilize Puerto Rico after the hurricane devastation of the U.S. island territory. 

Given that barrage of back-to-back summer hurricanes in the Caribbean and southern Atlantic, 67% of American Adults think this year’s hurricane season is worse than in past years, and they give high marks to those providing news coverage of the storms for the past several weeks. 

However, as if a string of powerful hurricanes pounding the U.S. mainland and territories weren’t enough, tumultuous events this week continued battering the American psyche.

In St. Louis, often violent protests erupted following the acquittal of a white former St. Louis police officer who fatally shot a black man in 2011. But Americans believe those protests are primarily fueled by criminals taking advantage of the situation and are not an expression of legitimate outrage.

Those protests are the subject of this week’s Rasmussen Minute.

Since President Trump last Friday declared that players who disrespect the national anthem should be fired, respect for the anthem and the flag has become a more contentious issue both in the National Football League and in national media. Hundreds of NFL players have knelt or sat during or otherwise avoided the national anthem. Thirty-four percent (34%) of Americans say they are less likely to watch an NFL game because of the growing number of protests by players on the field.

With NFL game attendance and viewer ratings down this season and many youth football programs suffering from a lack of interest, it seems football may be falling as a fan favorite.

Americans still see the value of organized sports for youth, but many, including parents with school-aged children, say children are less likely to participate in them.

Most adults still think kids are spending too much time on computers and electronic devices, though they see it as less of an issue now than they have in the past.

North Korea remains another area of contention and concern. 

Voters now think Trump is as big a threat to the United States as the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un who promises to attack us with nuclear weapons. But along party lines, 69% of Democrats rate Trump as the bigger danger, while 74% of Republicans identify Kim that way. 

Attitudes toward North Korea have changed little despite the increasingly heated rhetoric between the United States and the rogue communist regime. But voters are less supportive these days of direct military action against North Korea.

In other surveys last week:

-- Through it all, most Americans continue to say their families regularly display the U.S. flag on holidays, and as in the previous survey, 85% of adults consider themselves to be patriotic Americans.

-- As in prior years, voters remain strongly convinced that their fellow countrymen are not informed voters.

-- Voters still see a lot more corruption in the federal government than in its state and local counterparts, but there’s doubt about government honesty at every level.

-- Thirty-three percent (33%) of voters now think the country is heading in the right direction.

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.