Feelings Don’t Care About Economic Facts

We’ve talked in the past about the unreliability of polls that ask Americans to rate their feelings about the economy and economic issues. People’s perceptions of the economy and their own economic circumstances have always been complex but the dynamics are wonkier than ever.

For one thing, most people don’t feel rich — no matter how much money they have. This Bloomberg report, for instance, points out that many Americans wealthy enough to rank in the top ten percent of earners feel like they’re just scraping by: “In a nationwide survey of over 1,000 objectively wealthy Americans — defined in this case as making at least $175,000 a year, roughly the amount required to crack the top 10% of US tax filers — a full quarter told us they were either ‘very poor,’ ‘poor,’ or ‘getting by but things are tight.’ Half described themselves as just ‘comfortable.’”

When it comes to feelings about the economy, partisanship affects how someone judges the economy. Members of the party that currently sits in the White House have always tended to feel better about the economy than the party out of power. But there are some new and more dramatic swings, particularly for Republicans.

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