A recent Gallup study shows Americans are more dissatisfied with five key social issues: the economy, crime, terrorism, racial issues and military strength. Newell invited Gallup Editor-in-Chief Mohamed Younis onto the program Monday morning to explain more about the study
“Very interesting findings!” Newell began, “I went back and looked at a number of the ones that y'all had conducted in previous years. Tell us what this year’s survey revealed.”
“We've done it now for the past 20 years, this is actually our 20th year asking exactly these questions,” Younis explained. “We are taking the mood of the nation, and not surprisingly with so much happening, this was a relative low on many fronts. Overall satisfaction was at a historic low that we haven't seen really since the great recession, only 11% of Americans are satisfied with how things are going in the United States. And it goes beyond politics and policy. 81% of Americans are dissatisfied with the state of the moral climate in the country as well. So this was a year where we not only saw a decline on economic fronts, but also on policy questions and challenges facing the nation.
“We saw a 25 point drop in those who are satisfied with the state of the economy,” Younis continued. “Obviously this varies from region to region, but on a national level, only 43% of Americans in 2021 said that they were satisfied with state of the economy. In 2020, it was 68% of Americans who were satisfied. And January of 2020 is a really good comparison point because it was a relative high for a lot of the economic perceptions in the ways Americans described their own personal finances. And in 2021, we saw the assessment of the economy dip. That being said, though, it's important to also include that there's a considerable amount of optimism, as well as resiliency that comes with that negative assessment. One of the other questions we have for Americans is sort of how are you doing now versus how you think you'll be doing a year from now compared to how you were doing a year previous... to make a long story short, Americans compared this year much more negatively economically than last year, but most Americans expect to be doing better next year. It's important to keep that in mind because when we saw a lot of these record economic lows, comparing them to 2008, there was a lot less hope.”
“When we look at 2021, they're really reflecting on what their experience was in the year of 2020 and the same for 2020 of the experience in 2019... right?” Newell asked.
“Yeah, the question that I just referenced now basically says, how would you assess your economic situation now compared to a year ago? And then the other question is how would you compare it now to a year from today.”
“How much of that is the pandemic, which has everybody kind of upside down in our society today?” Newell continued. “Do you think that’s contributed to this major shift as it relates to the economy?”
“Absolutely,” came the answer. “You have to look at the pandemic and the economy as one and the same. One of the questions we ask every month is what's the most important problem facing the country, and not surprisingly the pandemic and the economic hurt that it created has switched places for first and second in many, many of the months of the past year. So we know from our data that this is certainly connected. We know from other polling that we've been doing around the actual economic impact of the pandemic itself that people are primarily looking towards the pandemic as the reason they're concerned about losing their job, their income has decreased. That's a big part of the story here.”
Hear the entire interview in the audio player below.
