A potentially brutal poll for incumbents yesterday suggests most Americans aren’t buying the hype that the economy is improving. The Gallup poll of national “economic confidence” shows a steep drop in the number of respondents who say they think things are going to get better anytime soon.
The poll found 63% of Americans say the economy is getting worse — a jump of 10% over the number who said the same thing in September 2009. That figure, however, is not a huge increase over the number who were saying things are getting worse at the beginning of August, when 60% of Americans told Gallup things are heading in the wrong direction. But where Americans’ feelings about the economy were on the upswing last year, now they’re feeling worse and worse about things as the election draws nearer.
That’s not the direction you want to see the line go if you’re an incumbent politician (or, ahem, an incumbent party controlling three branches of government). Rather than convert real gains in job creation and unemployment reduction — however slight — into confidence in the economy, the Gallup poll numbers seem to show Democrats are running in an environment where confidence is eroding.
Anyone who’s watched politics this fall might not find that surprising. But the numbers are pretty eye-popping anyway. Nearly half (47%) of Americans say that economic conditions are “poor” in the latest Gallup which is actually a sizable drop from three weeks ago when 51% of Americans said the same thing. But it’s still higher than last year at this time, when 44% said the economy was poor.
The economic reality is already a hard one for incumbents facing reelection this year — and we’ve already seen more than one incumbent go down to defeat in primaries driven by folks ostensibly motivated by economic factors. If economy polls keep going the way they are, more incumbents may suffer the same fate.
