Americans Have Low Economic Expectations For A Second Obama Term

YouGov
August 09, 2012, 2:00 PM GMT+0

(Week of 8/4/2012) One factor hurting President Obama in the fall race against Mitt Romney is the continued poor evaluation of the economy — 40% in this week’s Economist/YouGov Poll think things are continuing to get worse. And many voters don’t expect things to improve much in a second Obama term.

The weak jobs numbers in June raised public economic pessimism; the following two months of poor reports kept negativity high.

More Americans see bad future economic news if the President is re-elected than see them if the Republican wins. Nearly half expect a rise in the budget deficit if Obama wins in November; just 34% see that if Romney wins. More think their own taxes will go up in a second Obama term than think that will happen under Romney. More think unemployment will rise under Obama; more expect economic growth with Romney.

The President holds one major advantage over Romney: although Americans generally don’t trust either politician to say what he really means, they trust the President more than they trust Romney. Americans are closely divided on whether President Obama mostly says what he really believes or mostly says what he thinks people want to hear. As for Romney, once described as the "Etch-a-Sketch" candidate, twice as many think he mostly says what he thinks people want to hear than think he says what he really believes.