Majority of Americans wrongly believe US is in recession - and most blame Biden

[Omaha Steve]

Source: the Guardian

Lauren Aratani in New York
Wed 22 May 2024 05.00 EDT

Nearly three in five Americans wrongly believe the US is in an economic recession, and the majority blame the Biden administration, according to a Harris poll conducted exclusively for the Guardian. The survey found persistent pessimism about the economy as election day draws closer.

The poll highlighted many misconceptions people have about the economy, including:

55% believe the economy is shrinking, and 56% think the US is experiencing a recession, though the broadest measure of the economy, gross domestic product (GDP), has been growing.

49% believe the S&P 500 stock market index is down for the year, though the index went up about 24% in 2023 and is up more than 12% this year.

49% believe that unemployment is at a 50-year high, though the unemployment rate has been under 4%, a near 50-year low.

Many Americans put the blame on Biden for the state of the economy, with 58% of those polled saying the economy is worsening due to mismanagement from the presidential administration.

The poll underscored people’s complicated emotions around inflation. The vast majority of respondents, 72%, indicated they think inflation is increasing. In reality, the rate of inflation has fallen sharply from its post-Covid peak of 9.1% and has been fluctuating between 3% and 4% a year.


Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/22/poll-economy-recession-biden

[bucolic_frolic]

1. MSM has so abused the people they can be sold non-factual buzzwords

[Novara]

30. And 55% is hardly an overwhelming majority.

[Old Crank]

2. Our news media is a failure.

No good information or factual content.
The ignorance of the people polled is astounding.

[gab13by13]

3. Wow, 3 in 5 Americans.

That's an absolute statement and no one asked my opinion. So the headline should read 3 in 5 Americans minus gab13by13 who wasn't polled.

Polls are used for propaganda. Even after it was revealed that TSF paid for polls to make him look good people still wring their hands over them.

[ramen]

8. I just want to make sure I understand. All polls are and always were meaningless? nt

[gab13by13]

10. The Guardian should first conduct a poll

to find out how many Americans understand what a recession is.

[ramen]

25. Because the poll would reflect data that inform understanding of those individuals who were polled, correct?

I cannot figure out why DU has become such a poll denying place. Yes, polls are imperfect, but the good ones do show their methodology. Some polls are even deliberately imperfect to generate a conclusion, but their methodology tends to make that apparent. In all cases, they are simply data to parse. I am not going to stick my fingers in my ears and assume that will make the demonstrated problem go away. I hope that President Biden's reelection campaign doesn't, either.

We clearly have a messaging problem regarding the economy. This poll is not the only data point that indicates the scope of this problem. If we want Americans to understand what is actually happening in this economy then we have work to do. If we just ignore the problem, we are ceding the valuable talking point of an objectively booming economy.

[BeyondGeography]

27. Good post

I think, or at least I hope, the problem that is showing up in the numbers is slightly different.

Too many Americans see the name “Biden” and say “no.” If this pollster is right, and I think she is, more than a few of them will end up voting for him when November comes and they don’t have a choice:

Lakshya Jain, a co-founder of the electoral data analysis site Split Ticket, attributed at least part of the gap to some Democratic-leaning voters’ desire to express frustration with Biden as their party’s nominee — a frustration they may be more likely to vent about to pollsters than act upon in the polling booth.

“That high of a degree of ticket-splitting is a good flag that voters are pissed off and are expressing discontent,” Jain said. “We call that expressive responding.”

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-biden-polling-may-2024_n_664ce309e4b0f45dcbadbe54/amp

She’s talking about the gap between Biden v. Trump and D Senate candidates’ more positive numbers that showed up in two separate polls last week.

[Traurigkeit]

32. and what a 'poll' is.

[RobinA]

47. Only The Ones

you don't like.

[Novara]

31. 3 in 5 is 60%. This poll is 55%. Leave it to the media to exaggerate and distort.

[NanaCat]

40. They don't have to ask you

If you'd ever bothered to learn the basics of statistics, you'd understand why.

[Ray Bruns]

4. No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.

[IronLionZion]

17. GOP treats people like mushrooms

feed them shit and keep them in the dark. Then eat them.

[Arne]

35. True, and good one.

[Lovie777]

5. Most American say it's corporate greed...............................

that's why prices are high.

Makes you wonder about polls

[NanaCat]

41. How do you know most Americans think that?

Your polling expertise is...?

Do tell us how you arrived at this poll result you claim. I'm curious to hear how you selected your representative sample, what your confidence interval is, what the margin of error is, what process you followed in developing your survey questions.

I would absolutely love to hear all the details, so dish them up.

[twodogsbarking]

6. Teaching people is easy. Teaching people to think is not.

[Traurigkeit]

33. Actually it once was easy then The Republicans destroyed our education system.

[NanaCat]

42. How so?

Are you about to claim that schools stopped teaching critical thinking? Because I have a news flash for you: Other than a few rando teachers giving it a go, SCHOOLS HAVE NEVER TAUGHT CRITICAL THINKING. Not directly. Oh, you get a bit of it in math class and some when it's time for students to write a paper using citations. But teaching them the basics of logic, and especially logical fallacies? Nope. Doesn't happen.

Every teacher who has tried to teach actual critical thinking has had the parents whinging until the teacher stops teaching it. Know why? Because PARENTS DO NOT WANT THEIR KIDS TO LEARN HOW TO THINK. THEY WANT THEM TO OBEY.

It drives parents right up the curtains when their kids challenge everything they say and point out the flaws in their thinking. When they get fed up with it, they call the school and whinge that whatever the teacher's doing to make the kids so disrespectful and disobedient at home, to stop it.

It usually takes a month or two for admin to put the kibbosh on these idealistic efforts.

Always has.

Always will.

[BumRushDaShow]

7. The M$M spent 3 years claiming that

"a recession is coming... a recession is coming... a recession is coming". "Hard landing... hard landing... hard landing". "Massive unemployment... unemployment...unemployment", "Inflation... inflation....inflation".

And when the former three didn't happen and the latter dropped by more than half, they still equivocated because the analysts refused to acknowledge the effects of a major one-off set of circumstances of a pandemic, a war, and climate change-induced disasters.

Then a novel (although often proposed over the years) way to handle it was tried, but it was too late. The business media had already manufactured a United States that doesn't exist in order to generate "ratings" and "eyeballs", and those not paying attention much, bought into it.

I saw where one of the biggest farcical purveyors of this crap - Jaime Dimon - who finally reluctantly admitted he was wrong, is getting ready to exit the scene at some point and IMHO, the sooner the better.

[Arne]

36. Excellent post.

[Pototan]

9. A nation of morons

Let's not blame the media. I watch Bloomberg and CNBC and I know what the market is, the GDP the Unemployment numbers, the fed interest rate and the national inflation rate.

It takes 10 minutes out of my day. I do it while I'm shaving. Please, there is no excuse to be this dumb.

We don't live in North Korea. All the accurate numbers are available to anyone who lives in a Democracy.

[NanaCat]

43. The media does bear a large portion of the blame

They are the ones who have fallen down on the job in presenting accurate information.

Yes, some people are stupid or plain old bloody-minded and nothing gets through with them, but that's not all that many, really.

There's a huge mass of people around the average intelligence intervals who aren't stupid, but who have needed a media that does its damned job. Some of these people have had poor educational opportunities and thus had little or no chance to learn how to analyse information for accuracy. Even more people are busy and stressed from demanding-but-mind-crushing jobs and millions of other obligations; ergo, they don't always have the time or energy to dig through reams of data to arrive at correct conclusions.

All of those people rely on the media to do that for them. And if the media fall down on the job, as they have like the traitors they are, then the people won't have the information they need to understand issues and make the best choices.

[Pototan]

44. Not that many?

Last edited Wed May 22, 2024, 06:52 PM - Edit history (1)

It's a majority of the people I know in the US. I admit that because I'm a 71-year white straight male I'm in the Trump demographic, but that poll lines up with my experiences. Trump got about 70 million votes. You can't convince me there aren't a significant share of morons in America.

I left the country 2 years ago and retired in the Philippines. I spend 50 weeks a year here and two weeks in the US to do my taxes and get a routine annual medical check-up. It's the worst 2 weeks of the year for me.

[Lonestarblue]

11. Perhaps this is why polls are consistently favoring Trump over Biden.

We know outlets like Fox and Newsmax distort or fake the news, but I wonder about the reporting of the evening news of outlets like NBC, CBS, and ABC. I’m not a television watcher so I don’t know whether they report true conditions but these people who believe we’re in a recession are getting the wrong information from somewhere.

I regularly criticize the NYT and the Post, but how many people outside of major cities even read them. I suspect that the right-wing Sinclair organization is part of the problem because they own a large number of media outlets in smaller cities and towns. And here I blame Democrats and Republicans for not reinstating or creating a new media law that prevents the acquisition of so many media outlets under the control of one organization after Reagan jettisoned the Fairness Doctrine. We desperately need a media overhaul.

[doc03]

14. I watched a few minutes of Chris Cuomo on Newsnation last night. I believe

Cuomo is even worse than what I have seen on Fox or Newsmax. He does the both sides thing but it
is the Democrats that are to blame for everything. He said the border problem was caused by Biden when he
reversed Trump's executive orders. He said Shumer bringing up the border bill for vote was a political stunt.
He said you don't bring it up for vote, you negotiate. I thought it had negotiated with Sen. Langford. He went
from one issue to another and all were the fault of Biden and Democrats not working with Republicans.

[ClimateHawk]

15. Wow, CNN is pathetic!

Makes me thankful I dropped satellite TV years ago. I used to watch a lot of CNN and MSNBC back in the day but can’t stand it now.

[doc03]

45. CNN fired him, he is on News Nation now, it looks like another Faux clone. nt

[ClimateHawk]

46. Had no idea NewsNation was even a network

I thought it was a show on CNN. Thanks for the info.

[Zipgun]

12. There is still a lot of pain in our economy. Price gouging by corporations is hurting a lot of people and this pain

is exploited by the GOP and the misinformation machine ( the very people who helped cause and want even more wealth disparity).

[Doodley]

13. The Democratic leadership needs to get the message across about their achievements, or else we will end up with Trump.

[Rebl2]

18. Problem is

stupid msm does not want to cover that.

[Doodley]

20. True, but the Democratic PR folk can make their messaging newsworthy. Hold a press conference every day.

Choose locations that will get the most attention. Create publicity stunts. Launch poster campaigns and pledge cards, Create ads about Donald Trump's threat to our democracy that are so shocking that the media pay attention. Are they even trying?

[Rebl2]

23. Give me examples

of publicity stunts, ads so shocking that media pays attention.

[IronLionZion]

16. Replace the word "inflation" with "record high corporate profits"

and you'll be closer to the truth.

See the switch from "They're stealing our jobs" into "nobody wants to work anymore" to understand how the "job creators" will never trickle it down, ever.

When we have record high jobs and stock market, maybe it's time to raise taxes on the wealthy instead of complaining about the debt and inflation. We can target investment income like capital gains, dividends, carried interest, etc. like it was normal income. Somebody has gotten fabulously wealthy from that while lots of others don't feel any impact at all.

[Rebl2]

19. 👆👆👆👆👆

[mathematic]

37. You won't be closer to the truth since neither thing is true

Corporate profits after tax as a percentage of GDP hit a high in Q2 2021 and "the internet" has been misreporting it as an ongoing fact for THREE YEARS now.

In reality, Corporate profits after tax as a percentage of GDP is a touch lower than Obama's 2nd term. And corporate taxes are even lower now than they were then!

The majority of Americans think we're in a recession because they get one bias-confirming, out of context, economic data point stuck in their head from years ago and go about the rest of their lives as if its true.

[IronLionZion]

38. Corporate Profits after tax is looking sky high in this fed graph

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CP

[TexasBushwhacker]

21. Most people don't understand what a "recession" is n/t

[Rebl2]

22. I do not

understand that. We do not have millions losing their jobs, no high unemployment numbers, we have a stock market that is doing well

[andym]

24. Interest rates are high and prices that rose during inflationary period have not reversed

completely, and probably won't. The former will change as the Fed cuts rates. The latter is the new reality as deflation will occur only selectively (ice cream prices?, gasoline?).
Somehow people wrongly conflate increased prices with recession and unemployment.
A few Fed rate cuts before the election will do wonders I suspect, because of "easy money" availability and home loans-- though of course current prices are not going back to pre-pandemic levels.

[Think. Again.]

26. This type of misinformation correction...

...should be made into a series of campaign adverstisements.

[Historic NY]

28. You can't fix stupid is the media isn't will to do its job.

[TBF]

29. The high interest rates are a problem. Neither side will touch that because older folks vote -

and they are getting higher returns on their investments. BUT, those higher interest rates are hurting the younger folks starting out who don't have silver spoons (ie parents to help with downpayment for mortgage etc).

The high prices are not supply & demand - they are corporate greed.

So, I'm not sure how the campaign should tackle this. But I refuse to give in to "it's the media's fault" or "Americans are stupid" excuses.

[OrlandoDem2]

34. Biden must win!! We cannot allow Trump to appointment more MAGA judges!

Imagine if he gets 2 more lunatic MAGA judges on the court to replace Alito and Thomas.

[PatrickforB]

39. Please add my name to the GIANT LIST of people who think our shareholder-profit-driven media

has utterly failed this republic.

Wall Street's GREED for PROFITS in this case comes at the expense of TRUTH.

What is GOOD for Wall Street is NOT good for Main Street. Never has been.

[Vinca]

48. This morning I heard reporting on the record-breaking number of people traveling for the holiday weekend.

I wondered aloud how that could possibly be. To hear the media talk about the economy you'd think people were standing in bread lines not going on vacation.

[Aussie105]

50. Media doesn't need to be consistent.

It's a feature, not a fault.

Doom and gloom the whole year, but record sales at Easter, Christmas, Black Friday?

[Aussie105]

49. Propaganda is both insidious and effective.

Suppliers have a glut of a certain product, be it milk, eggs, cheese or bananas.
Get a few paid-for talking heads to speak up the benefits, repeat lots of times, and watch sales go up.

Go to a more abstract topic, like the economy, get a few talking heads to raise the question, are we in an economic slump, and without answering that question either way, people will be more inclined to answer positively when surveyed, yes, a recession it is.
And if asked why they think it is happening, the automatic fallback is to blame Biden.
People fill in the blanks. Just got to ask the question the right way.

If I was asked, I'd rely . . . don't know, don't care, my own 'economy' is fine thank you.

[ProudMNDemocrat]

51. THANK the RWNJ media coverage....for the LIES.

Even with Job reports each month showing job growth, steady Unemployment rates, lower prices for commodities, and wage increases, there will be those ignorant rubes still BLAMING Joe Biden.

Makes me wonder if some of those who blame Joe have had much of their student loans forgiven, thus giving them more purchasing power? Ignorance is not bliss people!

[Bayard]

52. I didn't think half the country watched Fox

What a dismal fact.