Polling

Another poll today, this one from the American Research Group, gives El Arbusto the lowest marks of his presidency. This isn't really news except that the writeup I read intrigued me enough that I read the actual poll. (Incidentally, ARG posts the actual wording they used in the poll, if you've ever wondered how they get their information.) The writeup indicated that 83% of Americans base their opinion of the national economy on gas prices.

This isn't really fair. Gas prices are not the national economy. Gas prices have a big effect on your personal economy (certainly on mine), and they can have an effect on the national economy just as surely. But they're a potential cause of a weakening economy, not a sign of an already poor economy.

I haven't really studied a poll in long while. This one was interesting. 22% of Republicans disapprove of Bush's leadership; that's high for this president. At the same time only 26% of Independents approve of him; this, combined with a whopping 7% of Democrats who approve (I doubt any of them will show up at Drinking Liberally this Thursday night), is why his overall approval rating is so crappy (only 34%). (If you're curious, on the rare occasion I get called for a poll I always report my party ID as independent.)

Bush's marks on the economy are lower than his overall marks by a few points. This is interesting because if anything the national economy is going better than the Iraq war. However, although economists and White House apparatchiks will tell you that the economy is doing great (although the last two months' numbers indicate potential weakness in the near future), it's interesting to see that Americans by and large do not think the economy is doing very well at all.

67% of people said the economy was either bad, very bad, or terrible, and 58% of people said it was getting worse. 60% thought the economy a year from now would be worse than it is today. More than half of people think we're in the tubes and getting worse, though the economy is actually at worst mediocre (with structural deficiencies that will come back to bite us by year's end like stagnant wage growth). Similar situations in the past caused Jimmy Carter to complain of a "national malaise" and Bill Clinton to say that the country was "in a funk." Bush should be credited for not coming up with a cute phrase, since they always make things worse. Among the 60% of people who disapprove of Bush's job performance, 96% said the economy was either bad, very bad, or terrible.
Remember when Bill Clinton said, "It's the economy, stupid?" Even in the midst of a shooting war, it's still true.

The problem with asking people what they think, of course, is that many of them don't think at all. 37% of Americans said the economy was either very bad or terrible, but only 30% said we were in a recession. If "very bad" is not a recession, then exactly what was the Great Depression? The scale stops before it gets to "throw yourself out the window."

Here's another funny thing. Only 31% of Americans said the economy was good or better, but 52% said their household financial situation was good or better. Of course part of this may be that people whose household finances are "terrible" probably don't answer the phone. However, although we're overall bullish on our own financial situation, 57% of us say our finances are getting worse. 44% of us think our finances will be worse a year from now.

As for me, my finances are fine now but will be worse a year from now, I don't approve of Bush's handling of the economy or his job, I don't think we're in a recession, and think the economy is overall getting worse. But they didn't call me.