Hostility Ebbs as Americans Savor Prosperity

Economic satisfaction has softened the anti-government sentiments of the early 1990s and left the electorate increasingly centrist and content with the country’s direction as campaign 2000 intensifies, a major new survey of public attitudes has found.

In a massive national poll, the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press finds that economic contentment has increased, hostility toward government diminished and the demand for sweeping political change receded since the political turmoil of the decade’s first half.

Yet the survey also found significant discontent with Washington’s current cast of characters. The approval rating for Republicans in Congress has sunk to a near-record low, and while President Clinton’s approval rating remains near 60%, 7 in 10 Americans say they are tired of the problems associated with his administration.

With those sentiments as the backdrop, the poll found the Republican front-runner, Texas Gov. George W. Bush, leading the favorite in the Democratic race, Vice President Al Gore, for president. Democrats, meanwhile, led the GOP when voters were asked which party they would support in the congressional elections.

These findings frame a critical question in next year’s election: Which will weigh more with voters: satisfaction with trends in the country or dissatisfaction with trends in Washington? That could largely determine whether Americans vote for continuity--a sentiment that could help both congressional Republicans and Gore, should he win the Democratic nomination--or change, which would bolster Democrats on Capitol Hill and the eventual GOP presidential nominee.

The survey is one in a series the independent Pew Research Center has conducted over the last dozen years to map the shape of the U.S. electorate. Based on a detailed analysis of views about government, social issues and foreign affairs, the report divides the electorate into 10 distinct groups: three that lean toward the GOP, four that favor Democrats and three that are independent.

Andrew Kohut, the center’s director, said the dominant trend in the survey, which involved nearly 5,000 interviews over a three-month period, is a rise in moderation across the electorate as the economy remains strong and other social indicators, such as welfare and crime, show progress as well.

That pull toward the center is visible from virtually every angle. The survey, for instance, still found substantial levels of cynicism about Washington and the political system. But on virtually all key questions, it found that attitude diminishing since 1994, when an anti-Washington tidal wave swept the GOP to control of Congress.

Since 1994, for instance, the percentage of Americans saying government programs are usually wasteful has dropped from 69% to 59%; the percentage saying government regulation does more harm than good has dropped from 63% to 55%; the percentage saying Washington should “help more needy people, even if it means going deeper into debt,” increased from 41% to 49%. Over the same period, the share of Americans who believe that “the government is really run for the benefit of all the people” has jumped from 42% to 49%.

Those attitudes appear linked to increased contentment about the economy and the direction of the country more generally. Fully 64% of Americans say they are satisfied with their financial situations, up 8 percentage points since 1994. Not surprisingly, the gains are largest among the most affluent; those earning less than $20,000 annually report no more satisfaction than five years ago. Yet even in that low-income group, the share of voters who say they don’t have enough money to make ends meet has dropped from 60% in 1994 to 54% now--the largest drop for any income group.

Fully 56% of those polled said they were satisfied with the way things are going in the country--a level of contentment reached only twice before in this decade and substantially higher than the level in the fall of 1988, when then-Vice President George Bush successfully ran to succeed President Reagan.

Yet both congressional Republicans and Gore are standing on thin ice. Ordinarily, Kohut noted, good times mean good prospects for the party in power. Yet the new poll’s findings show neither Gore nor the congressional GOP benefiting from that traditional relationship.

“In one case it has to do with the legacy of impeachment hurting Gore, and in the other it has to do with this increasingly bitter divisiveness in Congress at a time of moderation,” Kohut said.

After months of stalemate and gridlock with Clinton, the GOP Congress received strikingly negative reviews. Only one-third of those polled gave positive marks to the job performances of Republican congressional leaders, the lowest number in two years. One source of that discontent may be the finding that two-thirds of Americans believe the two parties have been fighting more than usual in Washington this year.

Against that backdrop, Democrats held a 49%-to-43% advantage when voters were asked which party they would support in next year’s congressional elections. And the survey found that Democrats held a substantial lead over the GOP when the question was which party could better deal with issues such as education, health care and the economy; only on questions of morality did the GOP lead.

Yet those moral questions appear to be casting a long shadow over the early stages of the presidential race.

The survey found enormous ambivalence about Clinton and signs that the negative aspects of the appraisal are hobbling Gore.

On one hand, the poll found that 59% of Americans approve of Clinton’s job performance, 55% believe it was wrong for the House to impeach him and 56% say his administration’s achievements will outweigh its failures. But fewer than one-third say they wish Clinton could run again, and 70% say they are tired of his ethical travails.

Ominously for Gore, Democrats who say they are weary of Clinton’s troubles are much more likely to defect to Bush than are other Democrats. The likelihood of defection is largest (44%) among an older, somewhat less-well-educated group that Kohut labels “socially conservative” Democrats--the same group, Kohut noted, that has bolted for other winning GOP presidential candidates since Richard Nixon in 1968. Gore is also facing a huge deficit among independents and trails Bush by 54% to 39% overall.

Gore’s troubles extend beyond Clinton: The survey finds that much larger percentages of Americans consider Bush a strong leader and a candidate with new ideas.

Much of that deficit may be rooted in the subordinate image that any vice president carries, which is subject to change if Gore becomes the nominee, Kohut said. The more stubborn problem, he argues, may be Gore’s difficulties with socially conservative voters unhappy with Clinton.

“On the basis of their view about Clinton’s job performance, people should be voting for continuity,” Kohut said. “But they are not, because of their misgivings about the scandal and about him personally.”

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Less Cynicism

Answers to questions in a new nationwide poll show less hostility and cynicism toward government than in recent years.

When something is run by the government, it is usually inefficient and

Now:

Agree: 59%

Disagree:

July, 1994

Agree: 69%

Disagree: 30%

*

People like me don’t have any say about what the government does.

Now

Agree: 47%

Disagree: 52%

July, 1994

Agree: 54%

Disagree: 46%

*

Source: Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. Current survey results based on interviews with 985 adults from Sept. 28 to Oct. 10. Margin of error 3.6%.