When the media and Republicans say that this election is a Change Election and that voters are angry, they point to this chart, which shows that an overwhelming majority think things in the country are on the wrong track. Ah, the ambiguous Right Track Wrong Track question. That question always implies that if we are on the wrong track, then that must mean the party in “power” is in trouble, and the party in power is always taken to mean the President’s party.
Well, I am a member of the President’s party, and I think we are on the wrong track so long as we have a Republican Party in control of Congress and a majority of the State Houses, since they cannot possibly govern and they have proven that time and again. And many many Democrats feel the same way. And of course the Republicans will answer wrong track so long as a black man is in the White House.
So it is a bullshit metric that we need to stop using. Especially when you consider that President Obama’s approval rating is at 55% and climbing. So they approve of the job Obama is doing in putting us on the wrong track? LOL.
Polling analyst William Jordan explains:
In fact, according to data from a recent YouGov/Economist Poll, only about 44% of Americans are both dissatisfied with the way things are going and also blame the Democrats “a lot” for the state of things. That includes 22% who also blame the Republicans or Donald Trump alongside the Democrats.
Put another way, a total of 61% either believe things are heading in the right direction (29%) or believe things are headed in the wrong direction but include Republicans on the list of those they blame “a lot”.
As Jonathan Chait points out the reality is that Republicans own a significant share of those “wrong track” numbers. Until the party recognizes it, they won’t improve their chances to win the White House.
The most ubiquitous piece of data to support the “change election” narrative is the very high “right track/wrong track number,” which was cited on the Charlie Rose panel and has become the favorite conservative measure of public opinion since Obama’s approval ratings hit 50 percent. But the right track/wrong track number has no predictive value of election outcomes. In the 1970s, when the public grew disenchanted with public institutions in the wake of Vietnam and Watergate, wrong-track numbers structurally rose and have stayed mostly high with few exceptions. “Wrong track” voters include large numbers of liberal Democrats who support the administration and feel frustrated the Republican Congress has blocked its proposals. As other, closer analysis has found, most Americans think their side is losing the partisan fight, which explains why so many believe the country is on the wrong track, but does not indicate any desire by frustrated liberals to hand the White House to the GOP.
The conviction that America is yearning to change parties in the White House is also undergirded by somewhat more amorphous evidence of working-class discontent — support for Trump among the white working class, generalized despair in rural and Rust Belt areas, and so on. In one of the short exchanges where Kaine defended Obama’s record, he cited 15 million new jobs, lower poverty, and rising median income. Pence focused instead on localized depressed areas. “You — honestly, senator, you can roll out the numbers and the sunny side, but I got to tell you, people in Scranton know different,” he said. “People in Fort Wayne, Indiana, know different.”
The “change election” myth will take on lasting power after the election. It will fuel the belief by the party Establishment that its choices were right — the maniacal opposition to everything Obama proposed, the obsession with cutting taxes for the rich, and so on — but their electoral vindication was merely derailed by the flukish nomination of a demagogue. If not for Trump, America was ready to give Republicans a chance to reverse the Obama years. The reality is that the best way to measure public approval for an elected official is to ask people if they approve of that official’s job performance. Trump has become a mechanism for Republicans to avoid coming to grips with the fact that the electorate that rebuked their party twice when it elected and reelected Obama has not reconsidered its position.
The truth is, voters are not angry. Republican working class whites, who also happen to be racists and bigots and sexists, are angry. There is a difference. Republican working class whites nominated Donald Trump as an expression of their anger. And they will be angry when he loses. Or maybe the landslide will be large enough to force some self reflection upon these angry Republican working class whites. It is unlikely since they are largely uneducated, but it may happen.
But if a successful and popular outgoing President is succeeded by his chosen successor, it cannot be said that this was a change election. It cannot be said that all voters are angry. It cannot be said that the country thinks it is on the wrong track.