Gallup polls Americans on politics, insurance options, economy

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    Democratic presidential candidate

    Democratic presidential candidate

    NewsWorks Tonight host Dave Heller sits down for his weekly conversation with Gallup’s Frank Newport to talk about trends in American opinion.

    Is it a winning strategy for Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders to link their campaign to President Obama? Overall, Obama is now pretty consistently coming in with an approval rating of 50 percent or higher … quite good on a relative basis in today’s polarized environment.

    One of Sanders’ signature issues is his call for a single-payer health care system. Conceptually, the public still prefers a system based on private insurance rather than a government-run system. But on some measures, we clearly find the public not rejecting a single-payer type system — particularly if, as Sanders does, it is defined as “Medicare” for all.

    Several other Sanders’ proposals sit well with the American public, as long as their cost is not emphasized. For example, Americans favor spending more government money on infrastructure to create jobs; they favor heavier taxes on the rich and well-to-do; they favor, in general, a shift to more nontraditional “renewable” energy sources; and they favor a path to citizenship for those in the country illegally.

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    What are Americans concerned about? The economy, dysfunctional government, jobs, immigration and health care. Terrorism is down as a concern. And 5 percent of Americans say that the election process is our most important problem — primarily, people mentioned Donald Trump.

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