Poll: Positive views of GOP for first time since 2005

Poll: Positive views of GOP for first time since 2005 By Catalina Camia, USA TODAY


More Americans view House Speaker John Boehner's Republican Party in a positive light, a new USA TODAY/Gallup Poll shows. CAPTIONBy Jack Gruber, USA TODAYSome good news for the Republican Party: A new USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds more Americans view the GOP positively than negatively for the first time since 2005.

The survey shows the GOP now has a 47% net favorable rating, following its successes at the ballot box in November when Republicans took majority control of the U.S. House, made gains in the U.S. Senate and won key governorships in states such as Ohio and Wisconsin.

By comparison, 43% of Americans have a negative image of House Speaker John Boehner's party.

Gallup's Jeffrey Jones writes that if the upward trend continues for Republicans, "this will indicate the party has completely recovered from the downturn it took beginning in 2005."

That's when public opinion about President George W. Bush soured, over the Iraq War and his administration's handling of Hurricane Katrina. Rising gas prices also didn't help.

The view of the Democratic Party, meanwhile, has improved slightly. The poll showed 46% of Americans viewed Democrats positively, compared with 47% who have a negative view.

Still, those numbers are among the worst Gallup has recorded for Democrats since 1992.

Last year, a record 54% of Americans had a negative view of Democrats, right after President Obama signed a sweeping new health care law mandating insurance coverage for all Americans.

The new survey is based on interviews with 1,032 adults taken Jan. 14-16. The margin of error is +/-4 percentage points.

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