Americans Hate Everyone/Gallup poll, asking people whether various groups have "too much power."

[sasha031]

Churches and the military manage to escape the "too much power" box largely thanks to support from huge numbers of Republicans. Labor unions and the federal government go the opposite way, but Democrats don't support them enough to keep their overall numbers from being pretty dismal. Lobbyists, banks, and corporations come in for mostly bipartisan abuse.

Roughly speaking, I'd say that this poll doesn't tell us much aside from the fact that American political beliefs are fairly incoherent. But we knew that already. Beyond that, an awful lot of Americans apparently feel that they themselves have no voice to speak of, which must mean that everybody else has too much. And they might be right.

And to put a timely political spin on this, the lousy showing of the federal government goes a long way toward explaining why Obama "lost" the battle with John Boehner and the tea party over spending cuts. Without taking sides on whether Obama himself deserves any of the blame for this, the fact is that it's pretty much impossible to win a political battle when the public is on the other side. And this poll makes it pretty clear that a big plurality of Americans are in favor of defanging the federal government.
http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/04/americans-hate-everyone

[Ian David]

1. They forgot to ask about the Reptoids under Mount Shasta. n/t

[RaleighNCDUer]

2. I wonder how that last question would have polled had they made it

'The Pentagon' rather than 'The Military'.

When you think 'the military' you think of GIs crouching behind a wall in Afghanistan.
When you think 'the Pentagon' you think of fat-cat generals, unnecessary weapons projects, and $500 toilet seats (and that's without going deeper into MIC).

[EC]

3. Notice under "not enough"

the unions are the highest percentage next to military, equal to religion...at least the people WANT more unions.

[damntexdem]

4. Pollsters have too much power.

;-)