Most Voters Believe Democrats Want to Raise Taxes Increase Government Spending

Texas Insider Report: AUSTIN Texas Heading into the final two months of the mid-term election campaign most voters believe Democrats in Congress want to raise taxes & spending while Republicans in Congress want to cut taxes & spending.  At the same time most voters believe that reducing taxes & spending would be good for the economy.    A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 62 of Likely Voters believe Congressional Democrats want to increase government spending. Only 16 believe the party wants to cut spending. On the tax front:

• 59 believe that most Democrats in Congress want to increase taxes
• 17 hold the opposite view

The economy is consistently ranked as the most important issue of Election 2010.  Currently voters trust Republicans more than Democrats on the issue. Thats a big reason that the Republicans lead on the Generic Congressional Ballot.  Many analysts including Larry Sabato are forecasting large gains for the GOP in November. As for Republicans 51 say that most Republicans want to cut government spending and 50 say they want to cut taxes.  27 believe GOP legislators want to increase spending. and 25 believe they want to increase taxes.

• 60 believe that tax cuts are good for the economy while 56 say tax hikes will hurt the economy.
• 56 believe that additional government spending will hurt the economy and 50 believe that spending cuts will help.  (See survey questions and toplines and crosstabs.)

Republicans and unaffiliated voters overwhelmingly believe that Democrats in Congress want to raise taxes and increase spending. Democratic voters are more evenly divided.

• 45 expect their own personal taxes to go up during the Obama Administration. Only 9 expect their taxes to go down.

As noted in a November 2008 editorial Obama won the White House by campaigning like Ronald Reagan and promising tax cuts for 95 of Americans. The disconnect between those promises and current perceptions is adding to the Democratic woes this election season.  The survey of 1000 Likely Voters was conducted on August 31-September 1 2010 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is /- 3 percentage points with a 95level of confidence.

See methodology. See Crosstabs.