Every afternoon, Gallup publishes a new data, and much of the political world quickly scans the presidential horserace and President Obama's approval numbers.
But I also like to scroll down just a little more to look at Gallup's "U.S. Economic Confidence Index," because it helps answer a fairly straightforward question: are Americans feeling better or worse about the economy. Yesterday's results were especially noteworthy.
Gallup
Looking at the results from left to right, you'll notice that yesterday's figures weren't just an improvement, they represent the single best point of Obama's presidency. In other words, according to Gallup, Americans currently feel more confident about the economy than any point since the president's inauguration.
This is consistent with other recent reports showing consumer confidence at its best point in five years.
To reiterate a point from a couple of weeks ago, there's a school of thought that suggests Americans' economic impressions were locked in months ago, and recent improvements probably won't have much of an effect on the presidential race.
But for voters who are still paying attention and who consider the economy an important election issue, the Romney/Ryan argument that the economy's getting worse is increasingly, and quite literally, unbelievable.
It would appear a growing number of Americans are feeling good about the economy at the precisely wrong time for Mitt Romney.
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So what. Despite all the sick revelations about Romney's business attitudes and disinterest in the economic welfare of the middle class, voters trust Romney more on economic issues
The gap is like 6 or 7% in Romney's favor.
Right. WTF???
What about the Clinton administration running the government in the black, with surpluses, amazing economic activity and higher taxes? What about the Economist magazine first saying the GM interventionwas foolish, then reversing itself like Romney and saying it was brilliant. What about the economic community coming to consensus on how well the government reacted to the 2008 crisis with the stimulus and actions of the Fed.
The GOP simply does not deserve any pretense of being good economic stewards. They are representatives of the plutocrats. That's all.
This is due to laziness. Dems have not annihilated the symbol of the GOP being better at the economy. The public sees a CEO title and a $10K suit, and they think some of that money will brush off on them. They are buying into noblesse oblige.
Their is nothing noblesse about the plutocrats.
They are parasites.
At this point truth doesn't matter and the GOP don't care. They are confidant that their base hate Obama enough to vote against him regardless.
It could come out that Mitt Romney was guilty of Securities fraud and Paul Ryan was a Grand Wizard and they wouldn't care.
These people don't care about anything as long as they can sideline the left and go on what they believe is their moral crusade to recreate the 1950's. These people aren't rational voters they are fanatics
Fine dragoon. Your point is beating a dead horse about the 43% base of the GOP.
Romney's figures are over 50 percent confidence in Romney handling economic questions compared to Obama's 44%. (TPM polltracker). So the problem with your analysis is that there are 7% of voters who are persuadable but are buying into the GOP meme of economic competence. Take a look at the supreme irony of the shift in that graph. Axelrod & Co where making devastating inroads into that confidence but then it suddenly swung back. The debate where Romney denied the relevance of arithmetic is where perceptions radically shifted back in Romney's favor.
He was BS'ing, and the president pointed it out over and over in that debate.
If MSNBC were commenting on the Douglas Lincoln debates, they would have abolitionists talking about how lamely Lincoln was responding about technical details about the Missouri compromise or an obscure Supreme court case called Dred Scott that no one in the crowd understood. Meanwhile Douglas' used crowd pleasing zingers about how Lincoln was proposing that blacks were the equals of whites.
What is abominable is how there is no recognition of its culpability in this farcical victory of form over substance. The journalists job is to call out BS for what it is.
Shapeshifting can only work with the complicity of the press. The GOP is good on the economy like Reagan or Romney won that their first debates. They lost, and the country lost as when laissez faire, deregulatory policies wrought their inevitable outcome in 2008.
The 2008 meltdown was the arbiter of the facts in those debates. The media commented on the form, and participated in a three decade long fantasy that has seen the rise of a new gilded age.
It is simply pathetic. Watching Maddow and Hayes get suckered into it that night was supremely disheartening.
"Shapeshifting can only work with the complicity of the press."
The press gets away with it only because the Amerrican Peepul, in its (cough, cough) God-like collective wisdom, allows them to.
The only thing that Romney has going for him is he's white.!! I saw an AP poll that says that 79% of white people are explicitly racist. So this is a put the white back in the White House election. There is a large percentage of voters who will not vote for Pres. Obama no matter what. Most of the economic data that is favorable to the President will never see the light of day on Fox News ( I hate to use that term), because it is anything other than news. Most republicans will not be reading this blog.
You won't hear this news on Fox, and that means a large portion of Americans will not hear it.
I do think 99%+ of likely voters have already made up their minds. Most of those who still say they are undecided will probably decide not to bother to vote. (A few may be voting on a downballot race or proposal, and flip a coin in the booth.)
You could put this on Fox and those Americans still won't hear it. They aren't listening to anything that counters their firmly held
beliefsopinions.This despite the best efforts of our Noble Job Creators to engineer a slowdown. I was listening to it on NPR this morning. the NJC's, you see, are concerned, very, very concerned, about Uncertainty. Oh the uncertainty, the terrible, terrible uncertainty! Uncertainty, you see, not some perverse tacit conspiracy among Republican leaning businesspeople to sit on expansion plans until after the election in the hope that Romney, who they think will be best for them (but, in fact, will be worst), will win it if the economy sucks. No, no, no indeedy, they'd never do that. No, it's just all that darned uncertain uncertainty.
If only there was no uncertainty in the world. Then the economy would truly grow.
I wonder how folks are going to feel when they wake up after the elections and find Romney and his terrifying plans headed for the White House -- ? How long will it take them to realize that they've put the fox inside the hen house -- ?
Oh, and speaking of the White House, how large an extension will the Romney's add on to it?
That happened in Ohio when they elected Kasich into office. Now we have Kasich trying to bust Unions, Secretary of State trying to suppress voters. There's just a large part of the electorate that buys into all of the "religious right" crap. I'm hoping people wake up to the back & forth, back & forth between Dems. & Repubs. we aren't really getting anywhere.
Have to get elevators for his cars installed.
If you want to know what a Romney presidency would look like,just take a look at Freeport ILL. A good size very profitable business is being closed and job's shipped to China by Mitt's Bain Capital.To add insult to injury, employee's are made to train the Chinese worker's that will do their job's in China,@0.99 cent's per hour.Now Romney keep's harping that China is manipulating their currency,and taking American job's. WHAT?The only place you will hear about this is MSNBC,Fox or CNN will never so much as mention this assault on the American worker.All they talk about is Benghazi.There can be no justice for the worker's in this country unless all so called New's channel's report on this sort of thing.
That's because it looks like Mitt is going to win in November, they know real help is on the way.
Eric, such self-delusion is a pitiful sight. Perhaps there's a medical cause? Possibly even a psychological one?
Then again, maybe it's that you've not met your monthly quota and that's why you're staining this blog with your drool.
Whichever...
I don't know how anyone with common sense and a rational mind could vote for Romney & Ryan. How can anyone vote for proven pathological liars. If you look at the kind of people and huge corporations that are supporting Romney that tells you all you need to know. These are super rich friends of his and they will expect a pay back and favors. You really think that they are given millions away for the fun of it? Most of Obama's money is coming from people like me and average people not huge greedy companies. The social issues should alarm people especially women. Our rights that we fought so hard for are at RISK if the Republicans get in power. The Republicans are self serving a holes. They are out of touch with the reality of peoples needs. I know the economy is important but social issues are as important because they are directly tied to the economy. Didn't everyone learn their lesson when they voted for Bush? Look at history it usually repeats itself. Whenever Republicans are in office we end up in war and our economy goes to crap. When Clinton was in office the country was doing just fine and he left us with a surplus. Obama wants to do what Clinton did but the Republicans keep blocking everything Obama tries to do that would benefit the people. Do people remember that the Republican party made it their goal to make Obama a one term president at any cost and it ended up being at our cost. Do people remember how much other countries hated us while Bush was in office? Thanks to Obama we are seen with more respect and trust. If all the other countries want Obama to win what does that tell you? We are a global economy so we all have to be able to work with each other and I don't see Romney doing that at all. He is a spoiled rich brat that has to get his way and that could never work out well. People WAKE UP and quit being impatient and let Obama finish cleaning up the HUGE mess the Republicans made. Did people really think it was going to get cleaned up in one term? It took 8 years for Bush to create this mess and it is going to take even longer to clean it up. Making a mess is easy it is the clean up that is hard. I think people should be grateful that Obama has done what he has done so far, he has got more done than I thought he would considering he had no help from the Republican party. Can you imagine how much better off we would be if the Republicans did the job they were hired to do and put our country first instead of their agenda to make Obama fail? I wish more people would look at the whole picture past, present and future not just the now. One of Americas problem is we want things now immediate satisfaction and that is what could hurt us in the end. If our country puts Republicans back in office like we did Bush it will be a devastating mistake we will backtrack so bad I don't know if we will ever recover.
Funny how soon people forget. Wake up and remember!
I wonder how this graph correlates with gas prices?
The other noteworthy point is the trough in August last year, which corresponds roughly with the debt ceiling showdown. I hope voters remember who was responsible for that nonsense.
Talk about town is that Romney and Ryan are neck and neck with Obama and actually have a chance of winning. To many in business they see a light at the end of the tunnel. That is where some of the optimism is coming from. There is actually a glimmer of hope that we won't have to endure 4 more years of this.
God forbid that we have a relatively decent President instead of a blood-sucking parasite like RobMe. (rolls eyes)