Opinion polls, like provencal steak, are best served with a fistful of salt.
However, a couple of releases from the Pew Research Center (Thursday) and Bloomberg (Friday) might be of interest to those who have been following the tax cut and/or deficit debates over the last weeks.
Slate’s Annie Lowery penned this masterful sketch of confusion on Thursday, but at an abstract level, Americans are pretty clear and consistent about their economic priorities. From the Pew report:
Given margins of error, relative rankings of economic concerns amongst Americans have essentially been flat for nine months.
Unsurprising, perhaps. But there’s little sign that the deficit has increased in absolute importance for Americans, either. Check out this question from the Bloomberg poll:
We’re not sure these questions cover the gamut of opinion but, less pedantically, these numbers have also been relatively flat over the course of the year – hovering around a 50/50 split. The Deficit Commission has obviously not managed to shift opinion — at least not yet.
Notably, though, the form of the question matters here, a lot. Take a peak at these results from the Pew survey, conducted just a few days before the Bloomberg poll:
See what happens when the clause “when the economy is better” is used rather than the more euphemistic “down the road”? That’s a 20 percentage point confidence deficit for you.
There is, however, little agreement over what to do about it. (Not dissimilar to the deficit commission then.) From Pew:
(Though, as Paul Krugman points out, there’s greater support for policies directly targeted at the wealthy and bankers.)
In any case, a couple of charts from this week struck home for FT Alphaville the need for some serious revenue raising at some point:
1. From Reuters, via Felix Salmon:
2. From BarCap’s US Portfolio Strategy:
These suggest that the response to this question (by Pew) will shift more from ‘A little’ to ‘A lot’ in the next months and years:
Related link:
Slightly less deficient deficit commission – FT Alphaville