Trump and the economy

 A few days ago, the New York Times had an article called "Why Trump's approval ratings on the economy remain durable."  In the first paragraph, it asked "Why does President Trump continue to get higher marks on economic issues in polls than his predecessors Barack Obama, George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush enjoyed when they stood for re-election?"  Its answer focused on growing partisanship and the declining number of swing voters.  That is definitely part of it, explaining why his approval ratings haven't varied much, but it doesn't explain why he gets higher approval ratings on the economy than on other issues.  The most recent Gallup poll, which finished on August 12, asked about the economy, foreign affairs, education, race relations, policy towards China, the coronavirus, and crime, and his approval ratings were highest on the economy.  

 

Gallup has asked about approval on various issues fifteen times during Trump's presidency.  It's almost always included the economy and foreign affairs, has included immigration and trade about half the time, and other issues less often, for a total of 23 issues that have been included at least once.  Trump's mean approval rating on the economy is 51%, which is the highest of all the issues.  The graph shows change in ratings on the economy, foreign affairs, immigration, and trade policy.

His ratings on the economy seem less "durable"--that is, more variable--than his ratings on other issues.  For example, his approval ratings on the economy gradually improved until early 2020, but dropped from 63% to 47% between January and June 2020.  His ratings on foreign policy also declined between January and June, by only from 47% to 41%.  Probably the reason is that people can observe the economy more directly, so ratings respond to real changes in conditions.  For something like immigration policy, most people don't have firsthand experience, and there's more room for interpretation of the things they hear about in the news.  As far as why his ratings on the economy are still relatively strong, I think it's because the economic collapse of the last few months didn't just happen--it has an obvious outside cause, the coronavirus epidemic.  You could still hold Trump responsible for mishandling the epidemic, but ideology can affect judgments on that.  

His overall ratings on different issues are also of interest.  There is a tendency for all to rise and fall together, so I, adjust for the time when questions were asked.  "unemployment" is the baseline, simply because it was the last one on the list:

economy              9.6

terrorism              9.3   
crime                    6.7
defense                 5.5   
Korea                   4.4
gun                       2.0   

China                    1.6     
trade                      0.8
unemployment      0.0
taxes                     -0.2   
budget                  -0.2   
immigration         -0.8   

coronavirus          -1.2   
education             -1.5   
media                   -1.5   
foreign                 -1.7   
Iran                      -2.4   
environment        -4.8   

Russia                 -5.8   
race                     -5.9   
health                  -6.8   
corruption           -7.5   
Syria                   -9.2

 

There are definite differences in his ratings in different areas.  To a large extent, they are what you'd expect for a Republican:  stronger on issues where people like "toughness" (terrorism, crime, defense), weaker on ones where people like "caring" (race relations, health care).  Some of them seem to be distinct to Trump, like the low ratings on corruption and relations with Russia.  The fairly low ratings on "relations with the media" are also of interest, since many of his supporters see that as a strength for him.

 

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]   

 

 

Tolerance, part 5

 My last post discussed the relationship between tolerance and ideology, using an index of four questions from the General Social Survey on whether people with certain views should be allowed to teach in a university.  It found that college-educated liberals were the most tolerant group, in the sense of believing that people with unpopular views should be allowed to teach, but that the gap had been getting smaller.  In a comment on that post, Andrew Gelman suggested looking at each question individually, noting that two of the views could be considered left-wing (Communism and opposition to religion) while two could be considered right-wing (support military rule and belief that blacks are genetically inferior).  That seemed reasonable, so I did it.  The post and comment were a while ago, but I was on vacation, and forgot (or perhaps my unconscious mind decided) not to bring my computer, so I couldn't post anything.   I restricted it to people with college degrees, since many people don't understand or have an idiosyncratic understanding of the terms "liberal" and "conservative."  The GSS doesn't have a direct measure of understanding of the terms, but evidence from other surveys suggests it's closely related to education.*

 

 

Similar patterns for these three:  moderates and conservatives became more tolerant while liberals stayed about the same, so that the ideological gap declined.

 A different pattern:  liberals became less tolerant starting in the early 1980s, while conservatives and moderates remained about the same until around 2010--since then, they have also become less tolerant. 

How should these changes be interpreted?  One possibility is that the ideological gap at the starting point was unusually large.  The cultural conflicts of the 1960s may have made liberals especially conscious of free speech issues, so that the decline in the ideological gap since then is just a return to normal.  Another possibility is that there was a change in liberal ideology, with a shift from emphasis on individual rights to an emphasis on inclusion--that is, not offending people.   Observers who say that something like this is going on usually hold that it's a recent development, but these figures suggest that it started in the 1980s.  That shouldn't be surprising--large changes in public opinion are usually gradual rather than sudden.  

In any cases, views about the person who thinks that blacks are genetically inferior are clearly distinctive.  It's interesting that both moderates and conservatives also became less likely to support the right of such a person to teach, starting in about 2010.   Perhaps that's because conservatives were reacting against the charge that opposition to Obama (and later, support for Trump) was driven by racism. 

*Andrew suggested looking at differences by party rather than ideology, which I think would be interesting but a separate issue. 

Misery?

Writing in the New York Times, Roxane Gay says many companies have condemned the killing of George Floyd, but "more often than not, they lack any real diversity. They have no black executives. Their black employees are miserable."  Black executives are definitely scarce, but are most black workers unhappy?  The General Social Survey includes a question asking "on the whole, how satisfied are you with the work you do?"  People are offered four choices:  "very satisfied," "moderately satisfied," "a little dissatisfied," and "very dissatisfied."  39% of blacks choose "very satisfied" and 41% choose "moderately satisfied."  That's less satisfied than whites (who are 50% very and 37% moderately) but I don't think you could describe it as "miserable."  Still, people might feel good about the kind of work they do and at least some of their co-workers, but have negative feelings about other aspects of their workplace, so I wanted something more focused. 

Every four years starting in 2002, the GSS has asked "Do you feel in any way discriminated against on your job because of your race or ethnic origin?"  There is a big difference by race:  2.9% of whites and 14.6% of blacks say that they do feel discriminated against (9.9% of people who give their race as "other," but I'll just consider black and white from now on).  I then looked for differences within the races, starting with standard variables like education, age, sex, and occupation, and didn't find much.  That is, there was no clear evidence that men were more or less likely to think that they were discriminated against than women were, or that black men were more or less likely than black women, etc.   After this unpromising start, I set it aside for a while (Gay's piece came out on June 20), but as the summer wore on, I came back to it, and found a couple of things that seem to make a difference.  One is unionization:  workers who are union members are more likely to think that they are discriminated against (5.1%  of whites and 17.6% of blacks, compared to 2.8% and 12.9% for non-unionized workers).  Another is the race of the interviewer (the GSS is done in person, so people see their interviewer):  with a white interviewer, 2.6% of whites and 11.7% of blacks say they've been discriminated against and with a black interviewer it's 1.3% and 17.3%.  The race of interviewer effects seem easy to understand--people are somewhat concerned with what the interviewer might think.  With unionization, it seems unlikely that there really is more racial discrimination (against both blacks and whites) when there's a union--if anything, there might be less, since unionized workplaces have less managerial discretion and put more weight on objective things like seniority.  A more plausible explanation is that unions encourage people to look out for unfair treatment and provide avenues for people to do something about it. 

But probably the most interesting thing about this question is the simple point that only about 15% of black people "feel in any way discriminated against," and it doesn't rise above about 20% in any subgroup that I looked at.  There's no objective standard for what is high or low, but if you'd asked me to guess how many black workers felt discriminated against I think I would have said about 25% or 30%, and that a lot of people would have guessed higher than that.   Of course, the GSS doesn't permit a fine-grained investigation, and I have no doubt that there are some organizations with "toxic" cultures where most black employees feel like they're discriminated against.  But they're not the norm.