Trump Economy Is Growing And People Believe Country Is On The Right Track

Americans brimming with optimism on the economy

BY JONATHAN EASLEY - 02/19/17 12:00 PM EST 4,824

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A strong majority of Americans say the U.S. economy is running strong, and most believe the upward trend will continue under President Trump, according to a Harvard-Harris poll provided exclusively to The Hill.

The survey found that 61 percent view the economy as strong, against 39 percent who say it is weak.

A plurality, 42 percent, said they believe the economy is on the right track, versus 39 percent who said it is on the wrong track.

Trump and congressional Republicans have claimed credit for the turnaround, noting numerous polls in 2016 that showed that many Americans wanted change in the nation's capital. Democrats counter that former President Obama handed a healthy economy to Trump and point out that the unemployment rate has dropped under 5 percent. At a press conference on Thursday, Trump said he inherited "a mess."

Among Republicans surveyed in the Harvard-Harris poll, 60 percent are satisfied with the economic trajectory, versus 23 percent who are dissatisfied. Only 33 percent of Democrats said the economy is on the right track, while 48 percent said it is headed in the wrong direction.

At 65 percent, Trump voters are the likeliest to say the economy is headed in the right direction.

"It's really a surprising turnaround given how negative voters have been about the economy since 2009," said Mark Penn, co-director of the Harvard-Harris poll. "But jobs remains the number one issue and a lot of the change in sentiment anticipates tax cuts and infrastructure programs."

The stock market is soaring and January marked the 76th consecutive month of job growth. The economy added 227,000 new jobs in January, far greater than the 175,000 economists had expected.

The White House has taken credit for that report, saying that companies are increasing hiring amid optimism that Trump would foster a more friendly business environment than the previous administration.

In an interview with The Hill last month, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) criticized Obama's record, saying under his watch the country "didn't have a single year of 3 percent growth, and the statute of limitations on blaming [former President George W. Bush] ran out a long time ago." He also said the stock market is rising because of the "expectation of regulatory relief and tax reform."

Trump, whose success as a real estate developer was central to his campaign pitch, has made job growth a priority. He meets frequently with business leaders and has signed executive orders aimed at dismantling Obama-era regulations and scaling back Wall Street reforms implemented in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis.

Still, only 27 percent of Americans said their personal financial situation is improving. Twenty-five percent said things are getting worse for them, and 38 percent said they’re doing just as well as before.

The economy aside, Americans have a far more pessimistic view of the nation’s trajectory as a whole, with only 34 percent saying the country is on the right track, against 52 percent who say things are headed in the wrong direction.

The online survey of 2,148 registered voters was conducted between Feb. 11 and Feb. 13. The partisan breakdown is 39 percent Democrat, 30 percent Republican, 27 percent independent and five percent other. The Harvard-Harris Poll is a collaboration of the Harvard Center for American Political Studies and The Harris Poll.

If America Was Doing So Well, Trump Would Not Be Running And He Would Not Be Resonating With Americans.

Americans Heard Obama’s Response To Trump And Left No Doubt About Who They Believe

New Bloomberg survey finds that people fear that...

Warner Todd Huston September 25, 2015 at 11:07am

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Trying to steal Trump’s “make American great again” rhetoric, President Obama has recently been reported saying that he has already made America great. But if this latest poll is any indication, no one believes a word that Obama is saying.

Apparently stealing a page out of Trump’s book, President Obama recently told the Business Roundtable that, “America’s winning right now. America is great right now.”

Contrary to Obama’s bold claims that he’s made America great, a new Bloomberg survey finds that 72 percent of Americans disagree with the President and say that the U.S. is not as great as it once was.

The poll also found that 66 percent of Americans say that the nation is headed in the wrong direction. That’s the highest level a Bloomberg national poll has recorded since December 2013. And it’s notable that in 2013 the economy was in even worse shape than it is now.

The poll also found that 47 percent of respondents said that America is “falling behind,” while 25 percent chose the even harsher assessment that the country is actually “failing.”

As to the question of the biggest threats to American greatness, 32 percent said “moral decay” and 27 percent said “our own lagging work ethic.” Next, 26 percent said the rise of the Islamic State is a hindrance while 21 percent said it was competition with China. Finally, despite the media’s and the left’s constant refrains, only a quarter said a “concentration of the nation’s wealth among a very few individuals” was our biggest problem.

So, while President Obama tries to claim that he has made America great and that our worst problems are “the rich” and “income inequality”, it seems that few believe him.

Poll Confirms What Most Of Us Believe, This Nation Is In Deep Trouble In Both Economic And Culture Areas!

…In A Handbasket: New Poll Finds Americans Have Grave Opinion About The Future Of This Country

August 6, 2014 by Ben Bullard 

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More than three quarters of Americans now believe their kids won’t inherit a better life than the lives they themselves enjoy, according to a far-ranging poll released Wednesday that finds aught but bleakness among most Americans’ attitudes on an array of economic and cultural topics.

Findings in the poll, conducted for NBC News and The Wall Street Journal, read like a statistical elegy for America, penned by its own inhabitants.

“Two words sum up the mood of the nation: Fed up,” begins NBC – normally among the mainstream media’s most robust water-carriers for the Obama Administration – in its summary of the poll’s revelations:

“Six in 10 Americans are dissatisfied with the state of the U.S. economy, more than 70 percent believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, and nearly 80 percent are down on the country’s political system, according to the latest NBC News / Wall Street Journal poll.

“The frustration carries over to the nation’s political leaders, with President Barack Obama’s overall approval rating hitting a new low at 40 percent, and a mere 14 percent of the public giving Congress a thumbs up.”

The Obama approval rating is an all-time low, by the NBC/WSJ poll’s count, and falls at or near the level of concurrent tracking polls from other outlets. It also closely mirrors former President George W. Bush’s approval rating at the same point in his two-terms presidency.

Across the ideological spectrum, economic concerns seem to drive the malaise. Forty percent of respondents said “someone in their household lost a job in the past five years.” Sixty-four percent indicated they’re still feeling the effects of the “Great Recession” personally. Fifty-seven percent said they were mad enough to “carry a protest sign for a day.”

NBC presented two “word cloud” graphics, each reflecting the most common phrases that Democrats and Republicans would put on their hypothetical protest sign in that scenario. As different as those two word clouds are (and they indeed are very different), the one significant phrase both share in common is “Focus on our own country.”

“This is a bad poll for President Obama, and not a good poll for anybody else,” said Bill McInturff, a Republican pollster who helped conduct the survey.

If you’ve still got an appetite for more, you can see the poll’s full results here.