THE TIMES POLL : Discontent Threatens Both Parties as U.S. ’96 Vote Nears : Politics: Support for Clinton and GOP is lackluster, but third-party bid appears tough. Social issues lean to right.

One year before the 1996 election, Americans remain deeply discouraged about the country’s direction, disaffected by Congress and uncertain about President Clinton, a new Times Poll has found.

The survey suggests that the waves of discontent that swept Clinton into office in 1992, and then carried Republicans to control of Congress in 1994, have not finished reordering the political landscape. Slightly more than half of the registered voters polled said they are likely to vote against Clinton come Election Day--Nov. 5, 1996.

But doubts about the GOP remain powerful too: Ten months into the Republican “revolution,” just 12% of those polled said they have much confidence in Congress. And Democrats led slightly when voters were asked which party they would support for Congress next year, a measurable decline from the five-percentage-point advantage the GOP had last year. Republicans have lost ground particularly among those older than 65--most likely a reaction to GOP proposals to change Medicare.

Willingness to consider an alternative to the two traditional political parties is on the rise, but the Democrats and Republicans still each claim the allegiance of roughly 40% of the electorate. In between lies a volatile group of potential swing voters. But the poll suggests that turning those independent voters into a unified “third force,” as some have suggested, would be difficult. Americans who do not identify with either party agree on very little other than their alienation from Republicans and Democrats and from the government itself.

While the poll indicates trouble for both Democrats and Republicans, many of the underlying attitudes expressed in the numbers track more closely with traditional conservative than liberal themes.

* By nearly 3 to 1, respondents said they would prefer a smaller government with fewer services to a larger government with many services.

* Traditional attitudes about family structure are on the rise, with almost half of those polled saying things would be better if women stayed home and men served as family breadwinners.

* Married people are notably more conservative than singles on cultural questions--and considerably more likely to disapprove of Clinton’s job performance.

* Blacks and whites share strikingly similar views of many cultural issues, including the belief that poor women often have children to get more welfare money. The two races differ strongly, however, on the strength of racism and the role of government.

* Americans also remain pessimistic about the economy, with 51% of respondents saying the next generation will have a worse standard of living than today’s; only 13% expect living standards to improve.

Hovering over these ideological expressions are pervasive attitudes of alienation and anxiety that pose threats to both parties--and promise a bumpy ride on the road to the 1996 election.

Two-Thirds Say U.S. Is on Wrong Track

Fully 66% of those surveyed said they consider the nation to be on the wrong track--a peak of dissatisfaction almost identical to the levels measured before both President George Bush’s landslide repudiation in 1992 and the Democratic congressional collapse two years later. And 69% said that “people like me have almost no say in the political system.”

That finding is only one example of sympathy for a rumbling insular populism that is hostile to policies on open trade, immigration and overseas military involvement espoused by opinion leaders in both parties. As Republicans attempt to consolidate their breakthrough in 1994, this widespread pessimism and alienation from the established order appears to threaten them as much as the Democrats do.

Significantly more respondents expressed dissatisfaction with the two-party system than did earlier this year--and nearly 60% said they would be willing to consider voting for an independent candidate for President in next year’s election.

The Times Poll, supervised by Poll Director John Brennan, surveyed 1,426 adults, including 1,190 registered voters, Oct. 27-30; it has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

On the economy, American attitudes appear not so much downcast as fragile and apprehensive. Though generally satisfied with their personal economic situation, Americans grow increasingly gloomy as they scan farther out onto the horizon.

Two-thirds of those surveyed described their personal financial situation as secure, and only 30% said they worry about being laid off in the next year; both of those figures are essentially unchanged from earlier this year. But poll respondents divided equally on whether the economy is in recession--a stunning finding, given that official statistics say the economy has been in recovery for more than four years.

Even more striking than these economic assessments are the consistently strong expressions of cultural conservatism.

The survey suggests an enormous audience for a revival of moral standards--a message now being pushed by leaders in both parties, from Clinton to Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) to retired Gen. Colin L. Powell. On basic questions of family structure, the poll finds many Americans reaching back for traditional arrangements that have grown less common in the social and economic upheavals of the past 30 years. At a time when about one-third of children are raised in single-parent households, those surveyed agreed, 78% to 21%, that “it’s always best for children to be raised in a home where a married man and woman are living together as mother and father.”

Likewise, 49% of those polled agreed “it is much better for everyone involved” if a man is the family breadwinner and a woman “takes care of the home and family,” up seven percentage points since 1994.

Strikingly, women (at 50%) are somewhat more likely than men (at 47%) to agree with the proposition that families are better off with a mother staying home to care for the children. Women who do not work outside the home agreed with that statement, 65% to 34%, while women who are in the labor force disagreed, 38% to 60%.

Almost three-fourths of those polled said they consider homosexual relations wrong. Asked if homosexuals should receive protection under civil rights laws, 43% said yes, 50% said no.

Three out of four support school prayer; slightly more than half said greater emphasis on religion is indispensable for improving the nation’s moral climate.

Abortion remains the great exception in this rightward tilt on cultural questions: 50% continued to support legal access to abortion, while just 34% said they believe that the right to abortion should be overturned.

But in many other ways, Americans are more open to cultural arguments associated with the right than with the left.

What is a “greater danger” for American society: intolerance of “other people’s lifestyles and beliefs” or that “too many people have lifestyles and beliefs which are harmful to themselves and society?” Just 36% cited intolerance; 52% said harmful lifestyles are a greater problem.

What is a “greater danger” for American society: “conservative religious and political groups” such as the Christian Coalition or “liberal groups like feminists and gay activists?” Just 18% of those surveyed pointed the finger at conservatives; 30% worried more about feminists and gays.

Told some of these results, former Education Secretary William J. Bennett, author of bestseller “The Book of Virtues,” said the sentiments expressed in the poll track with his experiences speaking to audiences around the country. “The binge is over,” he said. “We look at the carnage and are re-evaluating. We tried 25 years of ‘if it feels good, do it,’ and it didn’t work.”

Marriage Marks Different Responses

On most of these questions, only a small gender gap separates the attitudes of men and women. More significant is a division within the electorate much less frequently discussed: the distance between married and unmarried Americans.

Married couples were 16 percentage points more likely than singles to support school prayer, nine percentage points more likely to believe families are best served with the mother at home and nine percentage points more likely to worry about harmful lifestyles than intolerance. Asked if families today face greater pressure from the economic or the moral climate, singles pointed to the economy by 57% to 29%; married couples lean slightly toward moral pressures, by 44% to 41%.

This marriage gap remains a serious problem for Democrats. Unmarried Americans approve of Clinton’s job performance by 57% to 38%. Just 45% of married Americans approve and 49% disapprove.

By contrast, the divisions between whites and blacks on these cultural issues are muted. Blacks were as likely as whites to support school prayer, oppose civil rights for gays and consider homosexuality wrong, and were almost as likely to believe that a two-parent family is the optimum situation.

Blacks and whites also agree on several questions involving a second major theme in the poll: the need to balance social and personal responsibility in improving conditions for the needy. Three-fourths of whites said women on welfare “often . . . have more children so they can receive more money.” So did slightly more than 3-in-5 blacks. At the same time, about three-fifths in both racial groups agreed that “most poor people are hard-working.”

Majorities of whites (66%) and blacks (54%) say they believe that they can succeed economically through hard work. But whites and blacks differ sharply in their explanations for the problems of the urban poor. Among whites, 52% said the conditions of inner-city minorities primarily result from a failure of personal responsibility; just 32% blamed “racism and economic injustice.” Blacks came down sharply in the other direction: 62% blame racism, and just 17% cited personal responsibility.

Blacks and whites also clash sharply on the role of government. In the survey, whites were consistently far less supportive than blacks of an aggressive, activist role for government in society.

For instance, only 39% of whites agreed with the statement that “government is responsible for the well-being of all its citizens and . . . has an obligation to help people when they are in trouble;” slightly more than half agree with the contrasting assertion that individuals “are responsible for their own well-being.” Among blacks, those proportions are turned on their head: Seventy percent said that government has a responsibility, while just 22% said they believe that individuals should shoulder adversity alone.

Nearly three-fourths of whites prefer a smaller government with fewer services; a majority of blacks prefer a larger government with more services.

Should government work with business to help create jobs? Two-thirds of blacks said yes; 62% of whites said no.

Overall, the poll shows that as the nation heads into the election year, hostility toward government and antipathy toward Washington--sentiments with which the GOP has fervently identified--remain a bedrock of American political attitudes. Just 15% of those surveyed said Washington can be trusted to do what is right most of the time; 85% said it can be trusted only some of the time or hardly ever. In 1964, during the heyday of the Great Society, those numbers were nearly reversed: Seventy-one percent said they felt they could trust government always or most of the time, while only 20% said only some of the time or hardly ever.

Seventy percent of those polled said they believe that the federal government wastes at least 25 cents of every dollar it spends.

Republicans Face Some Hurdles

Yet just as Clinton was unable to translate general support for reinvigorating Washington into support for his specific agenda after 1992, Republicans appear to be having difficulty converting the widespread skepticism about government into support for their specific plans.

Overall, the poll found, 42% of registered voters said they are inclined to support Republicans in next year’s congressional election, while 44% said they will back the Democrats. In a Times Poll shortly before last year’s election, Republicans led, 45% to 40%.

The trend is strongest among older Americans. A year ago, a 45%-39% plurality of voters 65 and older said they would support GOP candidates for Congress. Now those older voters lean toward the Democrats, 52% to 34%.

In addition to whether respondents identify themselves as Democrats, Republicans or independents, the survey asked another series of questions to more precisely examine political allegiance.

Of those surveyed, 42% said they identify with the Democratic Party “as represented by Bill Clinton and his policies”; 40% said they identify with the GOP as “represented by the current Republican congressional leadership.” Twenty-one percent did not identify with either party.

A detailed mathematical analysis of the poll showed that several issue positions most powerfully predicted which Americans identify with which party.

The strongest associations came on two sharply phrased choices: Those who prefer smaller government broke strongly toward the GOP, while those who prefer a larger government with more services leaned toward Democrats.

Likewise, those who said rich people not paying their fair share of taxes poses a larger problem than poor people getting undeserved welfare benefits identified with Democrats, while those who worried more about the poor and their welfare checks strongly associated with the Republicans.

Similar divisions appeared in questions about gay rights and defense spending. Interestingly, opposition to abortion is strongly associated with being a Republican, but a position favoring abortion rights does not appear to determine a person’s being a Democrat--a finding that reflects the greater ideological uniformity of Republicans on that issue.

For those who refused to identify with either party, the only glue was alienation. These voters share a lack of trust in Washington, a conviction that the nation is on the wrong track and an absence of faith in the two-party system. But little else binds them, which suggests the difficulty of forging them into a coherent political force, as Ross Perot is attempting to do by organizing his own party.

The survey suggests that the “radical center” is in fact two groups. The smaller group is a generally upscale, college-educated voter who is liberal on social issues (such as abortion and gun control) and fiscally conservative (insistent on reducing the federal budget deficit even at the price of limiting spending on popular entitlement programs like Medicare).

The larger, and more volatile, independent bloc is a less affluent segment of the electorate moved by a less temperate set of concerns.

Indeed, the poll finds a substantial core of support for the inward-looking conservative populist positions associated with Perot, conservative commentator Patrick J. Buchanan and the unusual left-right alliance that opposed the free trade agreement with Mexico and Canada two years ago.

Populist Positions Are Rejected

Majorities of those surveyed rejected the three tenets of internationalism that have dominated both parties since World War II: active military engagement abroad, free trade and open immigration.

More than three out of five of those surveyed agreed that trade agreements with foreign countries “are a principal cause of lost jobs.” More than half of those polled agreed with the proposition that the United States should bring home “most of its military forces” stationed abroad. A virtually equal number, 52%, said even legal immigration should be reduced.

Slightly less than a fourth of those surveyed agreed with all three of those propositions--a figure that offers another measure of the downscale populist constituency that either party will have trouble assimilating. This constituency is drawn about equally from Democrats, Republicans and independents, the survey suggests, but it leans dramatically toward less-educated Americans. Those are precisely the people whose wages have faced the greatest downward pressure in the economic upheavals of the past 20 years.

Fully three-fourths of those attracted to all three of the conservative populist arguments have high school degrees or less--and an equal number earn $40,000 or less a year. These downscale, predominantly white Americans, a majority of them living in small towns or rural areas, could be the most unpredictable and unstable segment of the electorate.

Indeed, the survey shows that Americans with less education are far more likely than those with college degrees to brand the existing two-party system as basically unsound. Among high school dropouts, 60% said the existing system needs either “many improvements” or a “fundamental” overhaul. A majority of high school graduates agreed, compared with only 30% of Americans who have at least four years of college.

Voters across all education levels in the poll expressed a willingness to consider alternatives to the two parties. Slightly more than 4 in 10 said they would be very or somewhat likely to consider voting for an independent or third-party presidential candidate in 1996, while another 16% said they would be open to the possibility, given the right candidate.

Those are numbers that suggest there may be many unpredictable twists ahead before the nation selects the first President who will serve into the 21st Century.

Times Deputy Poll Director Susan Pinkus and research analyst Monika McDermott contributed to this story.

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About This Series

What’s on the mind of Americans one year before the presidential election? Beginning today, The Times takes a detailed look at the attitudes and anxieties--as well as the alienation--that can be expected to shape the ’96 campaign.

* Today: The Times Poll probes the views of more than 1,400 citizens from across the country on a range of political, social and economic issues.

* Monday: Extensive interviews in the city of Lompoc in California’s central coastal region offer a glimpse of the type of concerns voters will expect candidates to address.

* Tuesday: More so than most democracies, U.S. elections are marked by non-participation. Who are those who have given up on voting and why?

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The Mood in America

POLITICS / Troubled Times for Two-Party System

Do you think the two-party political system in this country is basically sound or unsound?

Sound: 47%

Unsound: 49%

Don’t know: 4%

****

Do you agree or disagree with the following statement: “Because America is dominated by large, powerful interests, people like me have almost no say in the political system?”

Agree: 69%

Disagree: 29%

Don’t know: 2%

****

Will you consider voting for an independent or third-party candidate for President in the next election or will you must likely decide between the nominees of the Democratic and Republican parties? (among registered voters)

*--*

Now Sept. ’95 Jan. ’95 March ’92 Would consider 43% 38% 29% 28% Would likely choose 38% 43% 47% 53% Democrat or Republican Depends on who runs 16% 13% 21% 13% Don’t know 3% 6% 3% 6%

*--*

****

Do you think things in this country are generally going in the right direction or are they seriously off on the wrong track?

Right direction: 27%

Wrong track: 66%

Don’t know: 7%

****

Do you approve or disapprove of the way Bill Clinton is handling his job as President?

Approve: 50%

Disapprove: 44%

Don’t know: 6%

****

If Colin Powell were to run for President, would you definitely vote for him, or would you consider voting for him, or would you definitely not vote for him?*

Yes: 11%

Consider it: 60%

No: 22%

Don’t know: 7%

****

If Ross Perot were to run for President again, would you definitely vote for him, or would you consider voting for him, or would you definitely not vote for him?*

Yes: 8%

Consider it: 32%

No: 56%

Don’t know: 4%

****

How much confidence do you have in Congress?

Great deal: 5%

Quite a lot: 7%

Some: 39%

Very little: 45%

Don’t know: 4%

****

SOCIAL ISSUES / The Racial Divide, Abortion and More

How big a problem would you say racism is in the United States today?

*--*

All Whites Blacks Major problem 47% 42% 75% Moderate problem 37% 42% 12% Minor problem 12% 13% 10% Not a problem 2% 1% 2% Don’t know 2% 2% 1%

*--*

****

Do you think families in this country are threatened more today by an economic climate that makes finding jobs and affordable health care difficult, or are they threatened more by a moral climate that hurts community standards and strong family units?

*--*

Now July 1994 Oct. 1992 Economic 45% 31% 51% Moral 39% 53% 29% Neither - 1% - Both 11% 9% 15% Don’t know 5% 6% 5%

*--*

- indicates less than 0.5% answered that way

****

How often do you think women on welfare have more children so they can receive more money?

*--*

All Liberals Moderates Conservatives Often 72% 62% 72% 79% Not often 24% 36% 25% 18% Don’t know 4% 2% 3% 3%

*--*

****

Do you agree or disagree with this statement: “It is much better for everyone involved if the man is the achiever outside the home and the woman takes care of the home and family”?

*--*

Working Non-working All Men Women women women Agree 49% 47% 50% 38% 65% Disagree 50% 52% 48% 60% 34% Don’t know 1% 1% 2% 2% 1%

*--*

****

Generally speaking, are you in favor of the Supreme Court decision that permits a woman to get an abortion from a doctor at any time within the first three months of her pregnancy?

Favor: 50%

Oppose: 34%

Indifferent: 12%

Don’t know: 4%

****

THE ECONOMY / Continued Pessimism About the Economy

Do you think we are in an economic recession?

*--*

Oct. Dec. Oct. Nov. Now ’94 ’93 ’92 ’91 No recession 48% 41% 29% 9% 12% Recession 47% 53% 66% 88% 85% Don’t know 5% 6% 5% 3% 3%

*--*

****

Who do you think is primarily to blame for the country’s economic problems?

Clinton Adm.: 7%

Dems. in Congress: 18%

GOP in Congress: 7%

Reagan/Bush Adms.: 49%

Don’t know: 19%

****

What do you think is the most important priority for improving the economy?

Reduce deficit: 36%

Fund domestic programs: 36%

Cut taxes: 19%

All equally: 3%

Other/Don’t know: 6%

****

Thinking about the next 12 months, how likely do you think it is that you or someone in your household will lose a job or be laid off?

Very likely: 15%

Fairly likely: 16%

Fairly unlikely: 23%

Very unlikely: 45%

Don’t know: 1%

****

Do you think the next generation of Americans will have a better standard of living than the one we have now, worse or about the same?

Better: 13%

Worse: 51%

Same: 33%

Don’t know: 3%

****

How the poll was conducted: The Times Poll contacted 1,426 adults nationwide, by telephone, Oct. 27-30. Telephone numbers were chosen from a list of all exchanges in the nation. Random-digit dialing techniques were used so that listed and unlisted numbers could be contacted. The sample was weighted slightly to conform to census figures for sex, race, age, education and region. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points; for certain subgroups the error margin may be somewhat higher. Poll results can also be affected by other factors such as question wording and the order in which questions are asked.

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A Consultant’s Check List

A campaign consultant using poll results to craft more applause lines would want his candidate to advocate:

Smaller government with fewer services (68%)

Prayer in the public schools (78%)

Maintenance of the federal ban on rapid-fire assault weapons (72%)

Limits on imported goods, a cut in U.S. commitments overseas and restrictions on lobbyists (79%)

More effort to punish violent criminals, less effort to rehabilitate them (67%)

A cut in legal immigration (52%)