Obama’s State of the Union – Major Issues

No single U.S. problem dominates public opinion as President Obama delivered his last State of the Union speech before the race to replace him heads to Iowa (Iowa caucus Jan. 18),. Satisfaction with direction of the country as Obama speaks has improved, up 9 points since December (32% today, up from 21%).

The uptick in the economy has finally caused the public to move the economy to second place and jobs and unemployment to fourth place on the latest Gallup poll (Jan. 2, 2015). Dissatisfaction with government is the top issue, with health care and immigration in fourth and fifth place.

In Gallup’s open-ended question, “terrorism” was not mentioned. When a list is provided to respondents to rank their priorities, terrorism is first. See Obama’s State of the Union – Terrorism.