Now and then

Opinion surveys began in the 1930s, when the state of the economy was obviously a major issue.  However, questions on "the economy" didn't appear until much later--the earliest ones I have found are from 1976.  Before then, questions focused on specific aspects of the economy--there were a few on "business conditions," but more on changes in your own situation.   The first of those was in June 1941:  "Financially, are you better off, or worse off than last year? "  31% said better off, 18% worse off, and 51% about the same.  The figure shows the net sentiment (better-worse) every time this question was asked (with some variation in form) from 1941 until the mid-1970s.  

Most of the questions asked about the previous year, but some asked about the "last few" or "last two or three" years.  It looks like assessments of the last few years were more positive than assessments of the last year.  After the mid-1970s, the questions get more numerous.   Here are results of the "last year" question from 1976-95.  

Here are results of the "last few years," which has been included in the GSS since 1972:

There is clearly a difference:  the balance on the last few years question is almost always positive--the only exceptions are in 2010 and 2012--while the balance on the last year question is often negative.  I'm not sure why this would be the case, but it means that you need to have different standards for evaluating the two questions.   Common sense suggest that they will rise and fall together to some extent, but how close is the connection?  I'll look at that in a future post.

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]

Too many people

 In 1947, the Gallup poll asked "Do you think this town [city] would be better off or worse off if more people lived here?"  31% said better off, 46% worse off, 9% the same, 5% that it depended on the type of people, and 10% weren't sure.  There was a parallel question about your state:  for this, it was 40% better off, 27% worse, 14% the same, and 20% no opinion.  So people were more positive about having more people in their state than in their town.  These questions were asked to a randomly selected half of the sample; the other half was asked "There are about 140 million people today in the United States. Do you think this country would be better off or worse off if there were more people living here?"  Only 16% said better off, with 56% saying worse off, 14% the same, 3% that it would depend, and 11% weren't sure.  That is, people were more negative about having more people in America than in their city or state.  Why?  One possibility is that 140 million sounds like a large number, so that mentioning it made people less inclined to say that we would benefit from having more.  But another possibility is that increases in the population of your town or state could involve people moving from other towns or states--an increase in the American population would have to involve immigration.*  

As far as group differences, people who lived in urban areas, more educated people, and people in New England and the Middle Atlantic states were more likely to say that a larger population would be good.  These qualities are all associated with "cosmopolitansim," supporting the idea that answers are related to attitudes towards immigration (the group differences for opinions about your city and state were generally smaller and had different patterns).**  However, negative opinions were more numerous than positive ones in every group.  There was little or no difference by party identification.  

This is one more piece of evidence for something I've mentioned before: Americans were not keen on allowing more immigration during the 1950s and 1960s--in 1964, when the restrictive 1924 law was still in force, more people favored reducing immigration than increasing it.  

*Over the long run, it could be natural increase, but people seem to think about the near future if the time frame isn't specified.  

**Most Gallup surveys asked about religion, but this one did not.

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]

Governors and presidents

 When people were talking about who Kamala Harris might choose as her running mate, Josh Shapiro's high approval rating was often mentioned.  I hadn't heard anything about how Tim Walz stood in that respect, so I looked and found that Morning Consult  tracks the approval rating for all governors.  As of July 24, Shapiro's net rating (favorable minus unfavorable) was +25, which is good but not exceptional (tied for 16th).  Walz was +13, which is below average but not exceptional either (tied for 36th).  There was no obvious pattern in the ratings, although there may be some tendency for governors in smaller states to have higher approval ratings:

The thing that I found most striking was simply that they were almost all positive--only two were "underwater" and those were at -1.  In contrast, Joe Biden has been underwater for most of his time in office, Donald Trump was for almost all of his, Barack Obama for about a third of his, and George W. Bush for about his last three years in office.  That led me to wonder if there was a general tendency for governors to get higher approval ratings than Presidents--often people feel more positive about things that are closer to them.  

There have been several questions about approval of the governor of your state, ranging from 1954 to 2023.*  The figure shows net approval ratings for governors, and presidential approval at the same times.  

Gubernatorial approval ratings have not been consistently higher than presidential--they were lower in six of the first seven times, and have been higher in the last three.  With only ten cases, it's hard to be confident about anything, but they suggest that the 21st century discontent is specifically about national politics, not about politics in general.   

*The Morning Consult data go back to 2017, but require a subscription which is beyond what my research budget can afford.  

Left behind?, part 3

The final issue I want to consider is whether people living in rural areas feel left behind in a material sense.  The GSS has a question on satisfaction with your financial situation which has been running since 1972.  There is no essentially no difference between the averages for people in MSAs, "other urban" counties (ie, with towns of over 10,000), and rural counties.*  The trend is -.01 in MSAs, -.02 in other urban counties, and -.04 in rural counties; the difference is probably statistically significant, but is too small to show up clearly in a figure.  Since 1994, there has been a question on how your standard of living compares to your parents' standard of living at the same age.  There's no clear difference on the average (if anything, people in rural areas are a bit more positive):  the correlations with time are -.07 in MSAs, -.10 in other urban, and -.06 in rural counties.  Finally, there's a question on how you see your family income relative to other American families--people in MSAs see it as higher, but there is little or no difference in the trends.  The GSS also asks about actual family income, which is indeed higher in MSAs.  The trend on family income is .15 in MSAs, .10 in other urban, and .16 in rural counties.  

So the growing relative dissatisfaction in rural areas doesn't seem to be a result of growing relative dissatisfaction with economic conditions.  That is, to the extent that people in rural areas feel "left behind," it's not by economic developments, but by something else.  

A couple of other notes:

1.  In the 21st century, over half of the white respondents live in MSAs, about a third in "other urban," and about 12% in rural counties.  

2.  In his speech at the Republican convention, J D Vance said he grew up in "Middletown, Ohio, a small town where people spoke their minds, built with their hands, and loved their God, their family, their community and their country with their whole hearts."  Middletown has a population of about 50,000 and is classified as part of the Cincinnati metropolitan area.  There's necessarily some fuzziness in the boundaries of metropolitan areas, and it's about 40 miles from Cincinnati, so you could argue about whether it should really be included.  But 50,000 isn't a small town--in Maine, where I live now, that would make it the second largest city.  So why did he say that it was?  I think it's an example of a tendency in political rhetoric and journalism to treat small town/"heartland"/working class/economically declining as more or less the same thing.  

*As before, I limit the analyses to whites.