As the incoming Obama administration and the Democratic congressional leadership scramble for ways to right the U.S. economy, 70% of U.S. voters say a free market is better than one managed by the government.
Just 15% say a government-managed economy is best, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Fifteen percent (15%) are undecided.
But indicative of the mixed feelings that beset many of the nation’s leaders, a majority of voters (52%) also believe there is a need for more government regulation of big business, although 35% disagree. Thirteen percent (13%) aren’t sure. (Last month, just 26% of adults were at least somewhat confident that U.S. policymakers knew what they were doing with regards to the economy).
Overall, voters are more ambivalent about the federal government’s role in the current economic crisis. Forty-eight percent (48%) worry the government will do too much, while 41% fear it will do too little. Eleven percent (11%) are not sure which is a greater concern.
Nearly two-thirds (65%) of voters agree, however, that government and big business often work together in ways that hurt consumers and investors. Only 15% of voters don’t believe that is true, and 20% are undecided.
The Rasmussen Consumer and Investor Indexes, which measure economic confidence on a daily basis, both held steady in the first readings since Christmas but still remain in record low territory.
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Ronald Reagan famously said in his first inaugural address in January 1981 that “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Fifty-nine percent of voters still agree with that view.
Ninety-one percent (91%) of Republicans favor a free market economy over a government-regulated one, as do 76% of unaffiliated voters. Only 49% of Democrats agree.
For 87% of conservatives and 68% of moderates, a free market is better, but among liberals, the choice is less clear. A plurality of liberals (47%) prefer a free market, but 31% say an economy managed by the government is better.
Seventy-two percent (72%) of whites say a free-market economy is better versus 54% of African-Americans.
Men, married voters and those with children at home are most supportive of a free market, as are voters between the ages of 30 and 64.
When asked who was a better president – Reagan, the champion of small government, or Franklin D. Roosevelt, the father of modern U.S. big government with the New Deal, voters give the edge to FDR 45% to 40%.
Fifty-five percent (55%) of male voters worry that the government will do too much in reacting to the nation’s current economic problems, while women are more evenly divided. Forty-two percent (42%) of female voters say government will do too much, but 45% think it won’t do enough.
Seventy-six percent (76%) of Republicans and a bare majority of unaffiliated voters (52%) fear government will do too much. But 61% of Democrats take the opposite view.
Similarly, 72% of Democratic voters say there is a need for more government regulation of big business, compared to 50% of unaffiliateds and 30% of Republicans. Fifty-nine percent (59%) of GOP voters say there is no need for additional regulation, a view shared by 36% of unaffiliated voters and 14% of Democrats.
Perhaps because they fear basic prices will rise with increased government involvement, married voters are 10 points less supportive of regulation that unmarried voters, and those with children at home are 18 points less enthusiastic than those without children in the house.
Just 52% of Democrats think government and big business often work together in ways that are harmful to consumers and investors, compared to 70% of Republicans and 77% of unaffiliated voters.
Seventy-two percent (72%) of Catholic voters, 66% of Evangelical Christians and 62% of other Protestants believe government and big business in combination often hurt investors and consumers.
In mid-November, 44% of adults agreed with President Bush’s statement that "free-market capitalism is far more than an economic theory. It is the engine of social mobility - the highway to the American Dream." Twenty-two percent disagreed, and 33% were undecided.
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Socialist Party of America.Twenty percent of the American public believes that socialism is superior to capitalism, says a poll by Rasmussen Reports released on Thursday, April 9.

Asked the question "Which is a better system - capitalism or socialism?", 53% of those polled found capitalism the better system, 20% preferred socialism, and 27% were unsure. The survey did not define either capitalism or socialism, but Rasmussen also cites a December 2008 result saying that 15% of Americans prefer a government-managed economy.

Analysis of the poll's data by website FiveThirtyEight.com furthermore found that support for capitalism was closely correlated with income; respondents earning under $20,000 a year having an eight percentage point preference for capitalism, while those earning more than $100,000 a year expressed a fifty-seven percentage point preference for capitalism. Rasmussen noted that socialism had much broader support among people under 30, where 33% support socialism and 37% support capitalism, than among any other age group.

Socialism has found support in several countries, with member parties of the Socialist International in government in over 50 countries around the world and with several other regimes describing themselves as socialist or communist; the 20% result Rasmussen finds is comparable to the electoral support for the New Democratic Party in Canada. Support for an independent socialist movement in the United States, however, has historically been limited. Socialist candidate Eugene V. Debs won 6.1% of the popular vote in 1912, and two members of the Socialist Party, Victor L. Berger and Meyer London, were elected to the United States Congress before the Great Depression. This brief flirtation with socialism is contrasted against the times during and following the First World War and Second World War, which were marked by "Red scares" — periods of pronounced anti-communism — in the United States.

Currently, only a single member of the United States Congress describes himself as a socialist: Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. The Social Democrats USA (SD USA), one of the successors of the Socialist Party of America, has expressed solidarity with the 76-member Congressional Progressive Caucus, which Sanders founded in 1991. It supports positions such as a living wage, universal health care, and the right of workers to form trade unions and engage in collective bargaining.

SD USA executive director Gabriel McClosky-Ross offered ''Wikinews'' an exclusive statement on the Rasmussen poll result:

  

Anti-communism has been an important part of American politics for several decades.While support for socialism in the United States may be growing, Rasmussen's polling finds that absolute majorities of the American public support both capitalism and free markets. Meanwhile, anti-communist sentiment remains strong in many segments of the US population, with opposition to socialism being a defining feature of Conservatism in the United States.

In an exclusive statement to ''Wikinews'', John F. McManus, President of the anti-socialist John Birch Society, offered  the John Birch Society's position on the poll result:


Americans currently most often cite the economy as their number one concern in polls, ahead of terrorism. In December 2008, workers at the Republic Windows and Doors factory in Chicago staged a union-backed factory occupation in a fight against company management — a return to tactics of direct action from the historically more subdued American organized labor movement.

On April 10 2009, Alabama representative Spencer Bachus (R-Alabama) told the ''Birmingham News'' that seventeen members of the US House of Representatives are socialists. He did not specify which members.