One More Sign the Economy Will Determine the Election
The recession may be over, but many Americans do not see the economy that way. Stagnant wages, persistently high unemployment and a spike in energy prices may make the lives of some people in the United States worse than they…
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A new Gallup poll shows:
The “economy in general” ranks No. 1 on Gallup’s Most Important Problem list in October, with 37% of Americans saying it is the top issue facing the country. This is up from 29% in September and exceeds unemployment, in second place at 26%. Mentions of unemployment are down this month from 32% in September, likely reflecting the recent decline in the government’s jobless rate to 7.8%.
Health care and the federal budget lag well behind, a sign that Americans are willing to let seemingly future problems to remain in the future, no matter how essential these issues are to the long-term health of U.S. financials.
Gallup researchers conclude:
The continued dominance of the economy as uppermost on Americans’ minds contrasts sharply with 2004 and 2000, when non-economic issues — the war in Iraq, healthcare, terrorism, education, and dissatisfaction with government, among others — were most prominent.
Troops are on their way home, there have been no attacks on U.S. soil and education problems can be left to those who are still being educated — more signs that Americans cannot look beyond the next few months, or even weeks.
Methodology: Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted Oct. 15 to 16, 2012, on the Gallup Daily tracking survey, with a random sample of 1,004 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia
Douglas A. McIntyre
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Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.
McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.
His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.
A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.
TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.
McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.