Do Republicans read election issue polls, and does it matter?

By Richard Barry

A new Gallup poll places the economy as the top concern for Americans with 86% saying it is extremely or very important to their vote next year.  This compares with 74% saying the same of terrorism and 61% of foreign affairs.

As Gallup notes, this could change between now and the fall of 2016, but "the economy will likely persist at or near the top of the list as it has done historically in both presidential election years and midterm election years and when the economy was weak, as in 2008, but also when it was strong as in 2000."

International matters are certainly never far from the headlines with growing concerns arising from the influence of Islamic terrorists in Iraq and Syria, ever present conflict in the Middle East and whatever it is Putin is up to. And terrorism is always there as a concern.

Foreign affairs more broadly, however, ranks behind several issues, including the way government operates in Washington, healthcare policy and the distribution of wealth and income in the U.S. Race relations and immigration have also been major news stories in recent months, but on a relative basis, Americans are less likely to say these issues are important to their presidential vote.

Does this then mean that an improving economy helps Clinton on the heels of eight years of Democratic incumbency in the White House? And does it make her a less available target as a former secretary of state if Americans are marginally less worried about issues around the world?

Likely, but I'm still preparing myself for many months of Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi.

Robert Reich explains it all to you (three economic myths)

Good news for the economy, bad news for Republicans

By Richard Barry

In what is surely good news for Hillary Clinton, a new Bloomberg poll finds that more Americans are feeling optimistic about the state of the economy and President Obama's handling it.

Americans are becoming more optimistic about the country's economic prospects by several different measures. President Barack Obama's handling of the economy is being seen more positively than negatively for the first time in more than five years, 49 percent to 46 percent—his best number in this poll since September 2009.

[. . . ]

“The uptick extends not just to Obama but to the mood of the country and to things getting better,” says J. Ann Selzer, president of West Des Moines, Iowa-based Selzer & Co., which conducted the poll. “This will be an interesting potential transition, if it's a movement that signals the country is more cognizant about things turning better and that, in an indirect way, they're feeling better about Obama.”

On the downside:

[T]he national survey of 1,008 adults, conducted April 6-8, also reveals that about three-fourths of Democrats and independents, along with a majority of Republicans, say the gap is growing between the rich and everyone else—and a majority of women want the government to intervene to shrink it.

Aside from the obvious takeaway that a strong economy is good for the incumbent party, perception of a growing wealth gap can't be good for Republicans, even as they attempt to make themselves over as the party of economic opportunity.

They will try to argue that the reason the middle class isn't doing better is because government is somehow keeping them down. And we know that constant chatter about higher taxes and unnecessary government regulation will inform much of GOP campaign. But is that likely to work amid perception that the economy is improving?

Doubt it.

Bernie Sanders on labor markets

By Frank Moraes

Dylan Matthews just posted a great, short interview with Bernie Sanders. It is about the Gang of Eight immigration bill that most everyone is so excited about. Sanders is not and it looks like he will vote against it. What really struck me was that his position is almost identical to mine: we need to normalize the 11 million undocumented residents but the rest of the bill is mostly bad.

Primarily, his concern is on the issue of employment. He is rightly highly skeptical that firms can't find American workers. He said, "Again, if there's such a crisis, why haven't wages gone up?" That's the critical question. The conservative response is usually, "Those jobs aren't worth that much." The idea here is that companies would go out of business if they had to pay enough for American workers. That is a decidedly non-conservative argument these conservatives are making. Basically, the logic is: the government should provide low wage workers to inefficient businesses. It's madness.

Sanders is really focused on technology jobs. He noted that in the last 11 years, wages have risen only 4.5%. What's more, he noted a clear mathematical problem with the push for more H1-B visas, "I find it hard to understand that, when nine million people in this country have degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields, only about three million have jobs in these areas." Part of the answer is that high tech firms tend to be picky, and highly resistant to hiring older workers. (By "older" they mean over 30 years old.) But the larger issue is just that there is a market for about 3 million tech workers and the industry is just lying about the availability of workers in order to keep wages down.

Unfortunately, Sanders hedges a bit. He also blasts the H2-B visa increases that will provide for even more seasonal workers. That's all good. But he says many times that there are companies who just can't find workers. He even provides a full tilt apologia for his home industry:

There are areas when you do need foreign labor. Here in Vermont, while I wish it were the case that kids would go into dairy, they do not.

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Bernanke to Congress: It's your fault

By Mustang Bobby

Fed Chair Ben Bernanke knows why the economy isn’t doing better: Congress screwed it up.

Of course, Bernanke is too polite to phrase things quite so bluntly. But to anyone versed in Fedspeak, that’s the gist of his message. Even as state and local governments are becoming less of a drag on growth, Bernanke says in his prepared testimony before the Joint Economic Committee, “fiscal policy at the federal level has become significantly more restrictive.”

“In particular,” his testimony says, “the expiration of the payroll tax cut, the enactment of tax increases, the effects of the budget caps on discretionary spending, the onset of sequestration, and the declines in defense spending for overseas military operations are expected, collectively, to exert a substantial drag on the economy this year.”

But they have voted 37 times to repeal Obamacare, so you can’t say they haven’t doneanything.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Self-defeating austerity

By Frankly Curious

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has just put out a paper on austerity. It argues that in the medium term, austerity is self-defeating. This is because austerity causes the economy to shrink by a greater percentage than the debt shrinks.

When deficit scolds talk about the national debt, they almost always do it in raw numbers. This is because "$14 trillion" sounds a lot more scary than "Our debt is equal to about our yearly productivity." But the proper way to look at government debt is relative to GDP or even more so Potential GDP. Traditionally, the way to get debt paid off is to outgrow it. This is how we got rid of most of our debt from World War II. (At least we did until that great debt cutter Ronald Reagan got into office.)

Given this fact, when looking at debt, we have to look at two variables: the size of the debt and the size of the economy. Those who would have us cut and tax our way out of debt introduce the concept of "confidence." This is the idea that businesses will see that the government is "serious" about debt, think the economy will soon by roaring, and so start investing in capital equipment and hiring people. This is a ridiculous idea that shows a shocking level of ignorance about how businesses actually work. As we have seen again and again, when the government cuts its spending, businesses correctly determine that the bad economic times will continue. This is exactly why business groups were against the Sequester.

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Latino voters are still with Obama

By Richard K. Barry

Maybe not surprising, but a Univision News/Latino Decisions poll released recently made clear the strength President Obama continues to have with Latino voters.

According to the poll released Tuesday - one year before Election day 2012 - registered Latino voters in the 21 states with the largest Latino populations prefer Obama over the top three GOP presidential candidates, Herman Cain, Mitt Romney, and Rick Perry by a two-to-one margin. The president is up 65 percent to 22 percent on Cain, 67 percent to 24 on Romney, and a whopping 68 percent to 21 on Perry.

That is certainly good news for Obama, and this is good news too:

If demographic trends are an indication, Latinos could play an even greater roll in 2012 than they did in the 2008. Last election, 6.6 million Latinos voted, but next year a record 12.2 Latinos are set to vole, a 26 percent increase from 2008, according to projections from the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) Educational Fund. Simply put, they are the fastest-growing voting group in the nation.

One other number worth noting is the very high percentage of Latino voters who are not blaming Obama for the struggling economy.

Sixty-seven percent believe that President George W. Bush is most responsible for the nation's economic woes (including 25 percent of Latino Republicans) and only 19 percent say Obama shoulders most of the blame. Those numbers track significantly higher than the sample of the general population, which split 50-33 percent between Bush and Obama.

Clearly the president will not want to take any constituency for granted, but this is a pretty good point from which to start making a pitch with this particular voting community.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)