Now Pew Research has come out with figures for 2011. They're not good news for Barack Obama and the Democrats.

Political dysfunction. Partisanship at record levels. Attack politics run amok. And public approval of Congress scraping the single digits (Sen. John McCain is fond of saying it's down to blood rlatives and paid staff).

One constant factor in the 14 contests with exit polls is that Mitt Romney has tended to run best among high-income and high-education voters. His leading opponents -- Newt Gingrich in South Carolina and Georgia, Ron Paul in Iowa, New Hampshire and Virginia, and Rick Santorum everywhere else -- have run best among low-income and low-education voters.

This issue of Political Report covers approval ratings of President Barack Obama's first year in office; changes in party and ideological identification over the past year and decade; polls on the condition of the national economy, abortion, and the upcoming British elections; and more.

Baby boomers who came of age during the social and political upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s tended to call themselves Democrats. But starting in the 1980s, attitudes of the baby boomers began changing. If this transformation continues, leading more of them to embrace the GOP, it could affect the 2012 election.

A close look at a major voting group--aging baby boomers--shows that this growing demographic is becoming more conservative.

Republicans are much more enthusiastic about the race than they were a month ago, but the party-identification measures still suggest the playing field favors the Democrats.

Forces allied to the former Gadhafi regime could still threaten a fragile new government using guerilla and terrorist tactics. It would be a mistake to underestimate his tenacity or to dismiss the warning of his son Seif that "We will fight to our very last man, woman, and bullet."