'Government Too Powerful' Say 60 Percent Of Americans Surveyed, Including Democrats And Blacks

A new Gallup Poll  revealed that 60 percent of Americans, which included a number of Democrats and blacks, feel that "the government has too much power". It ties with an earlier "high" in 2013 for the question.

Hence, for the third year in a row, almost 59 percent of the public believes that too much power vests with the government. In 2009 only 51 percent of the public felt that way, when it was President Obama's first year in office, but it shot up to 59 percent by his second year in 2010, after the passage of his health care law, the Affordable Care Act. It came down a bit to 57 percent in 2011.

The rising worry over the government's power can also be ascribed to Democrats, moderates and independents getting increasingly worried over his two terms. In his first term there were just 24 percent of Democrats with that view, while in the second term, there were 37 percent.

"Overall, the average percentage who thought the government was too powerful during Obama's first term-2009 to 2012-was 54%," Gallup said. "This term, the average has risen to 60%."

The latest survey shows that just 32 percent of the public believes that the government has just about "the right amount of power", even as 7 percent said it has too little.

Among moderates, 44 percent believed it in the first term, but today most moderates, about 57 percent, hold that view.

The independents who believed the viewpoint increased from 59 percent in his first term to 64 percent in the second. Republicans still hold the same views, with 80 percent still believing that the government has too much power.

Even though he is the first black US President, it is noteworthy that the largest increase in those who hold that viewpoint was among blacks, with a 20 percent increase from his first term to his second, going from 28 percent to 48 percent, according to HNGN.

"In the years prior to the election of Obama as the first black president, blacks generally were more concerned than the general public about the federal government having too much power," Gallup's Jim Norman wrote. "Obama's victory in the 2008 election led to a huge drop over the next year in the number of blacks having these concerns. Since Obama's re-election, polls the past three years have all shown a resurgence in blacks' concerns about government power."

This was a telephone survey that was done from Sept. 9-13 among 1,025 adults. Its margin error of plus or minus 4 percentage points is significant.