Monday, December 15, 2014

Poll: This Year Was Bad. Next Year? Maybe Worse

Our long national funk isn't over.
The stock market has been booming and jobs growing, but Americans are facing the new year with the most downcast expectations in nearly a quarter-century — a disconnect that reflects prosperity's limited reach and assessments that Washington's dysfunction isn't going to get better any time soon.
Half Full or Half Empty?
An end-of-the-year USA TODAY/Pew Research Center Poll finds an overwhelming 71% of those surveyed are dissatisfied with the way things are going in the country today. Just 49% predict 2015 will be better — the first time since 1990 that optimism for the year ahead has dipped below 50%.
Those attitudes have fueled developments as disparate as the rise of the Tea Party movement and coast-to-coast protests over the police shooting in Ferguson, Mo., says Matthew Dowd, a strategist for George W. Bush's 2000 presidential campaign. "There's a general sense of anger and frustration that nothing seems to change," he says. "They don't trust that anybody has their back."
Pessimism persists even though voters in last month's elections shook up who's in charge — Republicans will take control of the Senate as well as the House next month — and despite evidence that the economic recovery is on a stronger footing. In the past, those factors might have sparked a more upbeat public mood.
Not this time.
For one thing, the improving economy hasn't boosted everybody. While the jobless rate has declined to 5.8%, many people have given up looking for work and others are underemployed. A record-breaking stock market mostly helps those who own stocks.
For another, dismay over governmental gridlock may be dampening the impact of good news — a case of politics trumping pocketbooks.
In the poll, 81% say the country is more politically divided these days than in the past, the highest percentage in a decade. Seventy-seven percent predict that situation isn't going to get better over the next five years. More than a third expect it to get worse.
The nationwide telephone survey of 1,507 adults, taken Dec. 3-7, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
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