This special web survey and experimental exercise produces a powerful economic message framework for the President and Democrats in Congress. These messages significantly shift which party voters trust to address the economy and spending, which party is on your side and will bring the right kind of change, and shifts perceptions of the President on key attributes. The right framework shifts the vote for Congress and for president in favor of the Democrats. Progressives are not powerless in the face of this troubled economy.
The economy is in trouble and voters have lost trust in the Democrats and the president on handling the economy and on addressing spending and the deficits.
That leaves the President just barely ahead of Romney and Congressional Democrats just barely behind the Republicans. But this special web survey and experimental exercise produces a powerful economic message framework for the President and for Democrats. These messages significantly shift which party voters can trust to address the economy and spending, which party is on your side and will bring the right kind of change, and shifts perceptions of the President on key attributes. The right framework shifts the vote for Congress and even more important, the vote for president in favor of the Democrats. Progressives are not powerless in the face of this troubled economy.
This is the second phase of this year’s Economy Project that has concluded that progressives must address the real economy rather than the recovery from the crisis; they must focus on future plans and policy choices, rather than try to get voters to reward them for past performance. The research pointed to four key elements of the real economy that must become part of a Democratic economic framework, including:
1. The struggle of the middle class for survival
2. The lost focus on creating American jobs
3. The weight of public and private debt
4. The nexus of Washington and Wall Street that keeps government from acting on behalf of the middle class. The frameworks tested here incorporated that learning, which will enable them to dominate the conservatives and Republicans for the first time in this work.
Based an experimental web survey of 2000 likely 2012 voters conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner for Democracy Corps July 8-11, 2011. Unless otherwise noted, margin of error= +/- 2.2 percentage points at 95% C.I.
