Poll finds voters' mood on economy is grim -- for both parties

9.21.2010

Poll finds voters' mood on economy is grim -- for both parties

– 1 hr 55 mins ago

By JANE SASSEEN
Yahoo! News

With the economy clearly the big issue on voters' minds, Democrats and Republicans alike are ramping up the rhetoric with only six weeks to go before critical midterm elections that will determine who controls Congress.

Yet Americans surveyed in the first of a series of ABC News/Yahoo! News polls, released early Tuesday, have a message for both sides: Many respondents — including a clear majority of independents, who have provided the critical swing votes in many recent elections — have little confidence in either party's ability to do more for the economy.

Since Labor Day, President Barack Obama has focused intently on the economy, proposing a host of stimulus measures and warning in a series of combative speeches that a win for Republicans will mean returning to the Bush-era economic policies that the president says caused the economy to tank in the first place. (Read an ABC News story on Obama's new plan to create jobs.)

"Something that took 10 years to create is going to take a little more time to solve," Obama said at a Sept. 20 town-hall-style meeting broadcast by cable channel CNBC. Later, he said that "the most important thing we can do" to address the deficit and high unemployment is to spur growth in the economy. "What we can't do is go back to the same old things we were doing."

Republican leaders, meanwhile, continue to hammer home the message that two years of Democratic efforts to bolster the economy have failed, with little to show for the hundreds of billions of dollars spent but a soaring deficit, stagnant growth and still-sky-high joblessness.

"The American people are clamoring for a focus on jobs and righting our economy," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in a Sept. 16 statement. "Instead, for two years the president and the majority in Congress have veered off to the far left and pursued their own liberal wish-list agenda." (Watch ABC News video profile of Mitch McConnell.)

Neither side has convinced a majority of Americans. Fully 47% of those surveyed in the ABC/Yahoo! News poll say it won't make a difference to the economy whether Democrats or Republicans are in control of Congress.

That dissatisfaction was on full display during the CNBC town hall, when Velma R. Hart described herself as "one of your middle-class Americans" took the microphone to confront the president. Saying that she is a wife, a mother, a veteran and the chief financial officer of a veterans service organization, Hart told the president: "Quite frankly, I'm exhausted. Exhausted of defending you, defending your administration, defending the man for change I voted for, and deeply disappointed with where we are right now."

The question drew a long response from the president, who ticked off a list of his administration's moves to help such families: lowered student loan costs, protections against abusive credit card and mortgage practices, expanded health insurance for children. "And so my goal here is not to try to convince you that everything's where it needs to be. It's not. That's why I ran for president. But what I am saying is that we're moving in the right direction."

Video courtesy of CNBC. For more visit CNBC.com

The exchange became an immediate Internet sensation, as right-of-center websites turned the questioner into a viral star.

And no matter how often Obama makes the argument, his message appears far from sinking in. The unhappiness with Washington's efforts on the economy is even more stark among independents, according to the ABC News/Yahoo! News poll. A whopping 65% of them say it won't matter one way or the other which party is running the show.

The results of the poll, a national, random-sample survey conducted by Langer Research Associates, reflects widespread pessimism over Washington's ability to heal the economy.

The poll also may reflect a realization that the government, for all its influence and massive spending, has only limited control over the $14.6 trillion U.S. economy.

"Maybe independents have the more realistic view," says Larry Sabato, the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. "They may recognize most of what they hear from both parties as rhetoric."

Still, those numbers appear to represent a sharp shift among independents, who made up a key bloc that helped lift Obama into the presidency and helped give the Democrats some of the strongest congressional majorities in years. After independents backed George W. Bush and congressional Republicans in 2000 and 2004, the bloc's disillusionment with the Iraq war and the weakening economy led to a heavy shift into the Democratic camp. Obama won independents by 52% to 44%, says Sabato.

Many are now clearly disillusioned with the administration's performance. Only 11% of independents surveyed said they believe the economy will have a better chance of improving if the Democrats remain in charge after November.

Unhappy as many independents are with the current regime, however, that's hardly translating into a strong belief that Republicans will do any better. Only 21% of independents think the economy has a better chance of improving if Republicans gain control of Congress.

Analysts say those trends reflect a widespread sense that neither side has succeeded at coming up with effective policies to jumpstart the economy or job growth — and that much of what's being put on the table now is just more of the same. (ABC News video interview: Why are Democrats running from the president?)

"The Republicans left office on bad terms. Then the Democrats came in, spent a trillion dollars and said, 'Trust us.' Independent voters did trust them, and two years later they're seeing few results," says Daniel Clifton, a policy analyst with investment firm Strategas Research Partners in Washington. "They are disillusioned; they don't believe anyone is going to fix the problems."

Taylor Griffin, a former economic spokesman for John McCain who is now a partner in Hamilton Place Strategies, agrees. "Right now, the polling doesn't represent a swing towards Republicans; it's more a rejection of Democratic policies. It's more 'a plague on both your houses.'"

With their majorities in the House and possibly the Senate under threat, Democrats are sharpening their efforts to highlight the contrast between the two parties. The president has argued repeatedly in recent speeches that a vote to hand control of Congress back to the Republicans will mean a return to the Bush-era economic policies.

Will it work? For all Americans' current unhappiness over the economy, 52% say they still would prefer to have Obama in charge of economic policy rather than his predecessor. Only 35% of the survey respondents said they would prefer for Bush to still be in charge.

While that's a healthy margin, Obama's numbers don't reflect strong confidence in his oversight of the economy. A host of recent polls have shown broad dissatisfaction with his overall performance on the economy. An ABC/Washington Post poll completed Sept. 2, for example, showed that just 41% of Americans approved of how he's handling things. Only when compared with Bush does he poll well. (Revisit Minnesota's "Miss Me Yet?" Bush billboard.)

Those numbers contain a warning for Obama and his party as well. The percentage of Americans wishing Bush were still in charge of the economy is considerably higher than might be expected, given that Bush's approval ratings for handling the economy were at just 22 percent in an ABC/Washington Post poll in September 2008.

At least some Americans now appear to view Bush's economic tenure more favorably than they did two years ago — a tendency that appears far sharper among independents. Some 76% of Republicans would prefer Bush on the economy, while 90% of Democrats prefer Obama, as do 49% of independents. But 33% of independents now say they'd rather Bush were running the economic show.

Americans older than 35 are also more inclined to wish for Bush. While roughly 46% of them prefer Obama, some 38% say they would rather that Bush were in charge of economic policy again. That's a far cry from Americans ages 18 to 34, who prefer Obama over Bush on the economy by 64% to 28%.

As a result, there's a risk in focusing too much on the backward-looking message. Efforts by Obama and other Democrats to raise the specter of the "bad old days" under Bush may be of limited and declining value in drawing voters.

Analysts and strategists say independents will be particularly difficult to win over with that message.

"Voters don't cut anyone any slack," says Griffin. "At this point, they're saying to the president: The buck stops with you."

But Democratic strategist Robert Shrum, who ran John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign, argues that Obama has a shot at turning the tides of the election back in Democrats' favor if he focuses far more on the specific differences between how the two parties would handle key issues such as the soon-to-expire Bush tax cuts.

"That is a big opening for Obama," he says. "The conventional wisdom is that the die is cast. But if he has a clear, simply defined message, things can move fast."

Much, of course, will depend on who actually shows up at the polls come November. At the moment, with the Republican base far more charged up than Democratic voters, most analysts believe the GOP will probably see much stronger turnout.

Independents will again play a key role, but Sabato points out another critical factor: Though recent polls have shown that the independents who show up in November are more likely to vote Republican than Democratic, this year's group of self-identified "independents" will be a different group than those who turned up in 2008.

Turnout in November is expected to be roughly 20 percentage points lower than it was two years ago, Sabato says. Many of those who are dropping out are the "Democratically inclined" independents such as those from minority groups or younger voters.

"The independents turning up at the polls will be more conservative and more Republican-leaning in 2010," Sabato says. It isn't so much that millions of independents have swung from one party to the other over the last two years. But many of the independents who supported Obama two years ago may be so unhappy with what they've seen on the economy and elsewhere that they will simply stay home.

Jane Sasseen is the editor-in-chief of politics and opinion at Yahoo! News.