Fox News Poll: Voters say White House has mostly failed on priorities

A new Fox News national poll finds that majorities of American voters think the Obama administration has mostly failed at handling illegal immigration, improving the country’s image around the world, handling race relations, improving health care and growing the economy.

The assessment of the Obama administration’s performance mostly splits along partisan lines, with Republicans heavily critical and Democrats heavily supportive.  Yet half or more of independents say the White House has mostly failed in each of the areas tested in the poll, which was released Thursday.

The worst perceived failing is immigration: 64 percent of voters think the White House has mostly failed on handling illegal immigration, while just 28 percent feel it has mostly succeeded.

Click here for full results of the poll (pdf).

The poll also finds 59 percent feel the administration has failed on improving race relations -- nearly twice as many as say it has succeeded (30 percent). Black voters (60 percent) are much more likely than white voters (24 percent) to say the White House has succeeded at improving race relations.

The administration’s most positive ratings are on national security, where 43 percent of voters say the White House has mostly succeeded at making the country safer.  Yet that’s down 12 points from a record-high 55 percent who felt that way in June 2012.

More voters -- 49 percent -- currently think Obama has “mostly failed” to make the U.S. safer.

President Obama pledged to improve the country’s image around the world.  Most voters think his administration has failed on that.  In fact, this area shows the biggest decline: In June 2012, 48 percent felt the White House had mostly succeeded on improving the country’s image.

Now it’s 32 percent, while 60 percent say the administration has mostly failed to improve the nation’s image.

Another Obama campaign promise was to have the most transparent administration ever.  A 57-percent majority says the White House has mostly failed on this as well.  Just 31 percent feel it has mostly succeeded.

On health care, a signature priority for Obama, 39 percent say the administration has mostly succeeded in improving things, while 55 percent feel the opposite.

Some 40 percent say the administration has improved the economy, while 52 percent think it has failed here too.

Perhaps predictably, more than three-quarters of Republicans say the White House failed in every area tested.  As many as 89 percent feel the administration has mostly failed on handling illegal immigration and as few as 75 percent feel that way on making the country safer.

Among Democrats, on the other hand, half or more say the White House has mostly succeeded in each of these key areas.  The best issues for Democrats are making the country safer and improving health care, as 70 percent say Obama has mostly succeeded at each.  The lowest is race relations: 50 percent of Democrats say mostly succeeded, while 36 percent feel the administration has mostly failed.

And while half or more of independents say the administration has mostly failed in each of these areas, 66 percent feel that way on handling illegal immigration and 64 percent on improving America’s image.

The Fox News poll is based on landline and cell phone interviews with 1,018 randomly chosen registered voters nationwide and was conducted under the joint direction of Anderson Robbins Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R) from January 11-13, 2015. The full poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.