Survey: Nevada voters think U.S. on wrong track

LAS VEGAS (AP) - A statewide poll finds a majority of voters in Nevada don't like the direction the country is headed, and disapprove of the job President Barack Obama is doing.

Sixty percent of 625 people surveyed for the Las Vegas Review-Journal and CBS Las Vegas affiliate KLAS-TV said they believe the country is on the wrong track, 34 percent said the country is on the right track, and 6 percent said they aren't sure.

Fifty-five percent said they disapproved of Obama's performance as president, while 39 percent said they approved and 6 percent said weren't sure.

The sampling error margin in the poll reported Friday was plus or minus

4 percentage points.

Erik Herzik, chairman of the political science department at the University of Nevada, Reno, said the poll "captures a lot of feeling in Nevada that nothing is working."

Forty percent of the respondents in the telephone survey conducted this week by Washington, D.C.-based Mason-Dixon Polling & Research said they think Obama's actions to stabilize the nation's economy have hurt, while 29 percent credit Obama with improving the situation. Twenty-four percent said the president's actions have had no effect, and 7 percent weren't sure.

Asked which party would do a better job stimulating growth, improving the economy and reducing unemployment if they controlled Congress, 45 percent said Republicans and 40 percent said Democrats. Fifteen percent said they weren't sure.

Half said they opposed a national sales tax or a "value-added tax," although 25 percent were undecided.

Just over half the voters surveyed said they support repealing the health care reform plan approved by Congress and Obama.