US Economic System Fairness Poll — Gallup

According to those polled by Gallup following President Obama’s State of the Union address, 49% think the US economic system is unfair and 45% think it is fair. As far as how the system has treated respondents personally, 62% say it has treated them fairly.

Gallup notes the implications of the poll’s results:

The central assumption of the president’s strategy is that the U.S. economic system is unfair as it is currently constituted, and therefore needs to be made fairer. The president gets marginal support for this position from Americans, with slightly more saying the U.S. system in general is unfair than say it is fair.

The president gets less support when the issue is framed in terms of Americans’ personal situations, because a majority of Americans believe the economic system is fair for them personally. This discrepancy between general views of a situation and views at a personal or local level is not surprising. Americans tend to view local conditions more positively than conditions in the country as a whole on a wide variety of dimensions, including views of Congress, crime, education, and healthcare.