Pew Survey Finds More Americans Want Republicans to Lead

President Obama has done great things for the party. Not his party, the Republican party. According to a new survey published by Pew Research, American’s views of which party should take the lead in solving problems have shifted dramatically over the past four years.

Pew found that the President had a 19 point advantage on this issue in 2010, with 49% of respondents saying they wanted the President to lead and just 30% saying they wanted Republicans to lead. But that advantage is now gone. As of earlier this month (Nov. 6-9) 41% want Republicans to lead, topping the 40% who want the President to lead, a 20 point swing overall.

The Pew results seem to confirm polling by Gallup which found congressional Republicans have a 42% approval rating compared to a 39% approval rating for the President and a record low 36% for congressional Democrats.

The Pew survey also looked at specific issues and found Republicans had an advantage over the President in most of those. For instance, respondents thought congressional Republicans would do a better job handling the deficit (35-22), taxes (34-25) and jobs (35-29). Congressional Republicans also had an advantage on immigration (34-28) and foreign policy (31-26). The only area where the President had an advantage over Republicans was on the issue of the environment where he led by 15 points (35-20).

The Pew poll also suggests which party is more likely to compromise after the dramatic Republican election wins earlier this month. Only
32% of Republicans want to see their party work with the
President while 66% say their representatives should “‘stand up’ to
Obama even if less gets done in Washington.” That’s a bigger gap than
the one that existed in 2010 when Pew found 62% wanted to stand up and
33% wanted to work with the President.

Among Democrats, the majority 52 percent
say the President should work with Republicans even if it means disappointments for them. Just 43% of Democrats want the President to “stand up” to Republicans.