New poll: just 22% approve of debt deal, most doubt it will cut spending

Most voters disapprove of the debt ceiling agreement reached by the president and Congress earlier this week and most doubt it will actually reduce government spending.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 22% of Likely Voters nationwide approve of the agreement while 53% disapprove. Twenty-six percent (26%) are not sure.

Republicans and unaffiliated voters disapproved by a 4-to-1 margin. Democrats are fairly evenly divided with 34% favoring the deal and 40% opposed.

Conservative voters strongly oppose the deal while liberals are evenly divided. By a 51% to 20% margin, moderates disapprove.

The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on August 1-2, 2011 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC .

One reason for the disapproval may be that most voters (58%) say it’s unlikely the deal will lead to a significant decrease in federal spending over the next few years. Only 35% consider such spending cuts even somewhat likely. Most voters believe that cutting government spending will help the economy .

Forty percent (40%) of voters recognize that, even with the agreement, government spending will still increase over the next few years. Sixteen percent (16%) mistakenly believe it will go down while 34% expect it to remain about the same. ...

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