At one point the leader of the focus group asked participants to brainstorm the “top issues facing America today.” Here’s what they came up with:
- Terrorism
- Obesity
- Poverty
- Agriculture
- Political divide
- Apathy
- Climate change
- Pollution
- Foreign policy – changing from a unilateral world to bilateral world
- Health care
- Income inequality
- Social Security
- Education
- Trust in the government and police
- Quality of life
- Quality of water
- False media
- Police brutality
After they’d exhausted all the possible big issues facing the United States, the moderator observed that no one had thought to mention “the economy.” Economic-related issues — poverty and income inequality — had been raised, but the state of the macroeconomy, job growth, unemployment, etc. had not. A bit of collective head-scratching followed, and the group decided that yeah, “the economy” should probably be added to the list.
This was a focus group and is not necessarily representative of the public writ large. Survey data, however, also suggests Americans are less concerned about the economy than they used to be. The University of Michigan’s Consumer Sentiment Index, for example, shows that assessments of current economic conditions have been close to pre-crisis highs.
Likewise, here’s a chart from Gallup showing the share of respondents who volunteer some economic-related issue when asked to name “the most important problem facing the country today.”
This chart also includes lots of other responses that are not directly about measures of macroeconomic health, including taxes, corporate corruption and federal debt. The share of Americans citing only “the economy in general” in a recent October poll was just 17 percent.
That’s not zero, of course, but it does suggest that this election is unlikely to be a referendum against President Obama’s economic track record.