Tag: polls

What the Polls Are Saying After the Trump-Biden Debate

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Per Survey USA’s summary of its national post-debate poll, which was conducted among 3,300 adults, including 2,315 likely voters:

Just 29% of all voters say Biden is up to the job; 57% say he is not. Among Biden’s own voters, just 64% say he is up to the job; 14% say he is not; 22% are not sure. … 55% of likely Democratic voters say Biden should continue his run for a second term in office; 34% say he should step aside and allow another Democrat to run. 10% aren’t sure. If Biden does not step aside, 57% of likely Democratic voters say the Democratic Party should nominate him to run again at the Democratic National Convention this August; 33% say they should nominate another Democrat instead.

If Biden is replaced on the top of the ticket, which Democrat should replace him?

• 43% of likely Democratic voters say it should be Vice President Kamala Harris, including 63% of Black Democrats, 56% of Democrats age 35 to 49, 55% of those with children under 18 at home, and 53% of those with high school educations. Harris leads or ties as the top choice among every demographic subgroup.

• 16% choose California Governor Gavin Newsom, including a high of 24% among the oldest and typically most reliable voters, where he is tied with Harris. Newsom also sees outsized support among Democrats with higher income and education levels, and among men.

• 8% choose Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who outperforms his numbers among white and rural Democrats.

• 7% choose Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who outperforms her numbers among liberals.

• 4% choose Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro; 2% Maryland Governor Wes Moore; 1% choose someone else. 20% are undecided.

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Chas Danner

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June 29, 2024
2024 World Happiness Rankings: USA Falls Out of Top 20, Youngest Hit Hardest
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What are the top 20 happiest countries in the world? How do mental health and well-being trends look in the United States and Canada? The 2024 World Happiness Report is in!

The World Happiness Report is a research initiative to compare happiness levels between different countries.

The project first launched in 2012, surveying more than 350,000 people in 95 countries asking them to rate their happiness on a 10-point scale.

Each year they release a new report and the 2024 full report was just published a few weeks ago. There are some interesting findings in it that are worth highlighting.

First let’s look at the happiness rankings by country.

Top 20 Happiest Countries

Here are the top 20 happiest countries in 2024 according to the report.

The scores are on a scale of 1-10. Each participant was asked to think of a ladder, with the best possible life for them being a “10” and the worst possible life being a “0.” They were then asked to rate their current lives. The final rankings are the average score for each country.

(By the way, this simple test for measuring subjective well-being is known as the “Cantril Ladder,” it’s a common tool used in public polling especially the Gallup World Poll.)

The results:
The top 10 countries have remained stable over the years. As of March 2024, Finland has been ranked the happiest country in the world seven times in a row.

There was more movement in the top 20 rankings. Most notably, this is the first year that the United States dropped out of the top 20 (from rank 15 to 23 – an 8 place drop).

More alarming are the age gaps in happiness reports. In both the U.S. and Canada, those above the age of 60 report significantly higher rates of happiness than those below 30.

Above age 60, the U.S. ranks 10 overall on the world happiness rankings. Below age 30, the U.S. falls to rank 62, just beating out Peru, Malaysia, and Vietnam.

Could this be a sign of a continuing downward trend in places like the U.S. and Canada?

Potential Factors Behind Life Evaluation

How to measure happiness is always a controversial topic.

To this day, psychologists and social scientists don’t really have a reliable way to determine happiness besides simply asking someone, “How happy are you?”

However, the World Happiness Report attempts to take the above findings and break them down into six main factors that contribute to overall life evaluation on a societal level.

These factors don’t influence the final rankings, they are just a way to make sense of the results:
- GDP per capita – A general measure of a country’s overall wealth.
- Life expectancy – A general measure of a country’s overall health.
- Generosity – The level of a country’s trust and kindness through charity and volunteering.
- Social support – The level of a country’s social cohesion and community.
- Freedom – The level of a country’s freedom to live life as a person sees fit.
- Corruption – A general measure of government competence and political accountability.
Each factor helps explain the differences in overall happiness between countries, with some countries performing better in certain areas over others.

One benefit of this model is that it looks beyond GDP (or “Gross Domestic Product”) which has long been the overall benchmark for comparing countries in the social sciences. The U.S. has the highest GDP in the world and frequently ranks in the top 10 per capita, but the happiness rankings show there is more to the picture.

Conclusion

The World Happiness Report is a good guideline for comparing happiness and well-being between different countries. How does your country rank? It will be interesting to see how these rankings change over the next few years, do you have any predictions?

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Steven Handel

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April 4, 2024
Legal Weed States Reap Benefits

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Sometimes you buy an expensive pair of shoes and within hours you wish you hadn’t. Buyer’s remorse is the sense of regret after having made a purchase. It is frequently associated with the purchase of an expensive item such as a vehicle or real estate. Looking back at 2023, it seems legal weed sates reap benefits and have no buyer’s remorse for legalizing marijuana. BDSA, a leading analytical firm which covers cannabis, released the 2023 numbers and the legal industry has grown to $29.5+ billion. It would have been better had it not be for the New York City. And the tax revenue has been very helpful for the 24 legal states.

Related: Unlicensed Shops in NYC Are Doing Better Than The Naked Cowboy

Colorado and Washington approved adult-use recreational marijuana measures in 2012. Alaska, Oregon and District of Columbia followed 2014. Since then, states have weighed the benefits versus dangers of recreational weed. And the federal government has been watching.

Photo by Anton Petrus/Getty Images

Early on there was a YouGov poll respondents could choose between five different answers: “Success only,” “more of a success than a failure,” “more of a failure than a success,” “failure only” or “don’t know.” Approximately one-fourth of residents in Colorado, where voters approved recreational marijuana in 2012, called adult-use marijuana laws a “success only” while 45% of them labeled the laws “more of a success than a failure.” A little less than one in five Colorado residents (17%) said recreational marijuana laws were a “failure only.”

But there are very practical reasons for states to be pleased. It is estimated the illicit marijuana economy is worth around $30-$40 billion dollars. Recent research has shown that legalizing marijuana reduces violence and trafficking associated with the illegal drug trade thereby reducing the power and wealth of cartels and drug gangs. This is a boom for law enforcement in states as they can focus on other crimes.

Prison costs have also decreased. Private prisons are being phased out as there are fewer marijuana possession inmates to hold. This is another benefit for states budgets.

RELATED: The Most Popular Marijuana Flavors

And huge benefits is tax revenue. Missouri broke $1 billion in legal revenue and it was a pleasant surprise to state coffers. States with legal weed make more on cannabis revenue than on alcohol. This, despite alcohol having more sales. California is the only state which seems to have an issue with taxing…but states like Maine and Colorado are leading examples of good governance.

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Terry Hacienda

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March 15, 2024
Amazing Debut Albums: Vote for Your Favorites, Then Hear Your Choices on Deep Tracks

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The New Year makes its debut in a few short weeks, and Deep Tracks is focusing on the most remarkable Classic Rock debut albums! There’s nothing like your first! We’ll count down your favorite 50, as voted by you. The LPs in the poll below appear in randomized order, different for every voter.Then, hear the countdown when it premieres on Deep Tracks (Ch. 308) on December 29 at 5pm ET, 2pm PT. The special will also be available on the SiriusXM app and web player after it airs.

Directions: Vote once for up to 20 of your favorite albums in the poll below before 11:59pm ET on December 15, 2023.

Can’t view the poll? Click here.

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Matt Simeone

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December 1, 2023
Republicans Can’t Figure It Out

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Democrats yesterday continued to perform better at the polls than in the polls.

Even as many Democrats have been driven to a near panic by a succession of recent polls showing President Joe Biden’s extreme vulnerability, the party in yesterday’s elections swept almost all the most closely watched contests. Democrats won the Kentucky governorship by a comfortable margin, romped to a lopsided victory in an Ohio ballot initiative ensuring abortion rights, and easily captured an open Pennsylvania Supreme Court seat. Most impressive, Democrats held the Virginia state Senate and were projected to regain control of the Virginia state House, despite an all-out campaign from Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin to win both chambers. Among the major contests, Democrats fell short only in the governor’s race in Mississippi.

The results extended the most striking pattern from the 2022 midterm election, when Republicans failed to match the usual gains for the party out of the White House at a time of widespread public dissatisfaction with the president. Democrats, just as they did last November, generated yesterday’s unexpectedly strong results primarily by amassing decisive margins in urban centers and the large inner suburbs around them.

The outcomes suggested that, as in 2022, an unusually broad group of voters who believe that Democrats have not delivered for their interests voted for the party’s candidates anyway because they apparently considered the Republican alternatives a threat to their rights and values on abortion and other cultural issues.

“The driving force of our politics since 2018 has been fear and opposition to MAGA,” the Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg told me. “It was the driving force in 2022 and 2023, and it will be in 2024. The truth is, what we’re facing in our domestic politics is unprecedented. Voters understand it, they are voting against it, and they are fighting very hard to prevent our democracy from slipping away.”

The surprising results yesterday could not have come at a better time for Democratic leaders. Many in the party have been driven to a near frenzy of anxiety by a succession of recent polls showing Biden trailing former President Donald Trump.

Yesterday’s victories have hardly erased all of Biden’s challenges. For months, polls have consistently found that his approval rating remains stuck at about 40 percent, that about two-thirds of voters believe he’s too old to effectively serve as president for another term, and that far more voters express confidence in Trump’s ability to manage the economy than in Biden’s.

But, like the 2022 results in many of the key swing states, the Democrats’ solid showing yesterday demonstrated that the party can often overcome those negative assessments by focusing voters’ attention on their doubts about the Trump-era Republican Party. “Once again, we saw that what voters say in polls can be very different than what they do when faced with the stark choice between Democrats who are fighting for a better life for families and dangerous candidates who are dead set on taking away their rights and freedoms,” Jenifer Fernandez Ancona, the chief strategy officer of Way to Win, a liberal group that focuses on electing candidates of color, told me in an email last night.

Even more than a midterm election, these off-year elections can turn on idiosyncratic local factors. But the common thread through most of the major contests was the Democrats’ continuing strength in racially diverse, well-educated major metropolitan areas, which tend to support liberal positions on cultural issues such as abortion and LGBTQ rights. Those large population centers have trended Democratic for much of the 21st century. But that process accelerated after Trump emerged as the GOP’s leader in 2016, and has further intensified since the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion.

Across yesterday’s key contests, Democrats maintained a grip on major population centers. In Kentucky, Democratic Governor Andy Beshear carried the counties centered on Louisville and Lexington by about 40 percentage points each over Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron.

In Ohio, abortion-rights supporters dominated most of the state’s largest communities. That continued the pattern from the first round of the state’s battle over abortion. In that election, as I wrote, the abortion-rights side, which opposed the change, won 14 of the state’s 17 largest counties, including several that voted for Trump in 2020.

The results were equally emphatic in yesterday’s vote on a ballot initiative to repeal the six-week-abortion ban that the GOP-controlled state legislature passed, and Republican Governor Mike DeWine signed, in 2019. The abortion ban was buried under a mountain of votes for repeal in the state’s biggest places: An overwhelming two-thirds or more of voters backed repeal in the state’s three largest counties (which are centered on Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati), and the repeal side won 17 of the 20 counties that cast the most ballots, according to the tabulations posted in The New York Times.

Democrats held the Virginia state Senate through strong performances in suburban areas as well. Especially key were victories in which Democrats ousted a Republican incumbent in a suburban Richmond district, and took an open seat in Loudoun County, an outer suburb of Washington, D.C.

The race for an open Pennsylvania Supreme Court seat followed similar tracks. Democrat Daniel McCaffery cruised to victory in a race that hinged on debates about abortion and voting rights. Like Democrats in other states, McCaffery amassed insuperable margins in Pennsylvania’s largest population centers: He not only posted big leads in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, but he also built enormous advantages in each of the four large suburban counties outside Philadelphia, according to the latest vote tally.

Read: America’s bluest state loves its Republican governor

From a national perspective, the battle for control of the Virginia state legislature probably offered the most important signal. The Virginia race presented the same competing dynamics that are present nationally. Though Biden won the state by 10 percentage points in 2020, recent polls indicate that more voters there now disapprove than approve of his performance. And just as voters in national polls routinely say they trust Trump more than Biden on the economy and several other major issues, polls found that Virginia voters gave Republicans a double-digit advantage on economy and crime. Beyond all that, Youngkin raised enormous sums to support GOP legislative candidates and campaigned tirelessly for them.

Yet even with all those tailwinds, Youngkin still failed to overturn the Democratic majority in the state Senate, and lost the GOP majority in the state House. The principal reason for Youngkin’s failure, analysts in both parties agree, was public resistance to his agenda on abortion. Youngkin had elevated the salience of abortion in the contest by explicitly declaring that if voters gave him unified control of both legislative chambers, the GOP would pass a 15-week ban on the procedure, with exceptions for rape, incest, and threats to the life of the mother.

Read: Why deep-red Kentucky reelected its Democratic governor

Youngkin and his advisers described that proposal as a “reasonable” compromise, and hoped it would become a model for Republicans beyond the red states that have already almost all imposed more severe restrictions. But the results made clear that most Virginia voters did not want to roll back access to abortion in the commonwealth, where it is now legal through 26 weeks of pregnancy. “What Virginia showed us is that the Glenn Youngkin playbook failed,” Mini Timmaraju, the CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All, an abortion-rights group, told me last night. “We showed that even Republican voters in Virginia weren’t buying it, didn’t go for it, saw right through it.”

Youngkin’s inability to capture the Virginia state legislature, even with all the advantages he enjoyed, will probably make the 2024 GOP presidential contenders even more skittish about openly embracing a national ban on abortion. But Timmaraju argued that yesterday’s results showed that voters remain focused on threats to abortion rights. “Our job is to make sure that the American people don’t forget who overturned Roe v. Wade,” she told me.

None of yesterday’s results guarantees success for Biden or Democrats in congressional races next year. It is still easier for other Democrats to overcome doubts about Biden than it will be for the president himself to do so. In particular, the widespread concern in polls that Biden is too old to serve another term is a problem uniquely personal to him. And few Democrats really want to test whether they can hold the White House in 2024 without improving Biden’s ratings for managing the economy. Trump’s base of white voters without a college degree may be more likely to turn out in a presidential than off-year election as well.

But a clear message from the party’s performance yesterday is that, however disenchanted voters are with the country’s direction under Biden, Democrats can still win elections by running campaigns that prompt voters to consider what Republicans would do with power. “We have an opening here with the effective framing around protecting people’s freedoms,” Fernandez Ancona told me. “Now we can push forward on the economy.”

Yesterday’s results did not sweep away all the obstacles facing Biden. But the outcome, much like most of the key contests in last fall’s midterm, show that the president still has a viable pathway to a second term through the same large metro areas that keyed this unexpectedly strong showing for Democrats.

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Ronald Brownstein

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November 8, 2023
Americans Agree They Hate Each Other – Dave Henry, Humor Times

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A new survey has found that Americans are overwhelmingly united on how much they hate each other.

“People say America is a divided country, but our data shows that’s not true,” said Tom Andjerry, pollster with Suffolk University in Boston. “They are in almost complete agreement in how much they hate each other.”

Specifically, the poll shows that 98 percent of Americans agree that they hate people that think differently about politics than they do, while 96 percent hate people that think differently about religion.

Further, 95 percent hate people that think differently about society and culture, while 97 percent hate people who look differently than they do.

The fastest growing segment of people who are united in their hate are fans of TV shows and movies.

Some 95% agree that they can’t stand people who don’t like the same shows as them, with 93% saying they wouldn’t be seen with them and 90% agreeing they wouldn’t be caught dead with them. That comes out to like 300%, but it just shows you how much people are in agreement on this subject.

The unity is even higher on social media where 100% of people agree that they want to gouge their eyes out with a fork rather than read political opinions from idiots in the opposing party.

“It’s really a Kumbaya moment in America. Everyone can agree on how much they hate each other. In these divisive times, it’s heartening to see that there are still things that we all have in common, and that we can rally around as a people,” said Andjerry.

“It’s just a great big melting pot of people who can’t stand one another.”

Dave’s work has appeared in various publications including End of the Bench, Robot Butt, and The Spoof, as well as many unfunny outlets. He also sometimes refers to himself in the third person.

Latest posts by Dave Henry (see all)

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Dave Henry

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November 4, 2023
Long U.S. dollar now seen as the most crowded trade, but bodes ill for the greenback

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Long positions in the U.S. dollar is now considered the most crowded trade, according to a survey conducted by the Bank of America with global fund managers, but the greenback is likely near a peak, the bank said.

The bank surveyed 67 fund managers managing $997 billion assets under management from the United States, United Kingdom, Continental Europe and Asia from October 6 to 11.

The response represents a shift from early August as fund managers surveyed became more concerned about interest rates in September, according to the Bank of America note.

The latest survey bodes ill for the U.S. dollar
DXY,
as the equity rally this year has partially corrected and bond yields risen, after earlier making it to the most crowded trade, according to the bank’s strategists.

“We believe USD is near the peak, further strength requires a change in narrative,” the strategists wrote.

The ICE U.S. Dollar Index
DXY,
which measures the greenback’s strength against a basket of rivals, has slightly pulled back from its highest close in 11 months at 107 reached on Oct. 3, according to FactSet data. The index is mostly flat on Friday at around 106.6.

Strong economic data in the U.S. coupled with a relatively more hawkish Federal Reserve than other major central banks, could be the most likely reason to support further strength in the dollar, according to the fund managers surveyed.

BofA Global Research

Meanwhile, the biggest downside risk to the greenback is if the U.S. economy sees a hard landing which will prompt the Federal Reserve to cut its policy interest rates.

BofA Global Research

Respondents of the survey think that rate cuts are currently underpriced, and they think the Fed is likely to cut rates the most among major central banks.

“This should erode faith in USD strength, and suggests that USD longs may indeed be vulnerable,” the strategists noted.

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October 13, 2023
Eurozone Economy Contracts Further in July, PMIs Suggest
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By Ed Frankl
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Business activity in the eurozone weakened in July, falling further below the level that marks contraction, data from a purchasing managers’ survey showed Monday.

The HCOB Flash Eurozone Composite PMI Output Index–which gauges activity in the manufacturing and services sectors–fell to an eight-month low of 48.9 in July, from a downwardly revised 49.9 in June.
The reading also fell below expectations of economists polled by The Wall Street Journal, who expected the PMI to come in at 49.7.

Write to Ed Frankl at edward.frankl@wsj.com
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July 24, 2023
Biden would beat Trump even if a third-party candidate joins White House race: poll

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Voters are more interested in another Joe Biden administration than any third-party option or Donald Trump in 2024, according to polling data from Monmouth University.

In another Biden vs. Trump election, a combined 47% of voters say they would definitely or probably vote for President Biden and 40% of voters would definitely or probably vote for ex-President Trump. But majorities would not vote for either Biden or Trump, the poll found.

The electorate is seemingly disheartened with these two choices, but they’re not exactly enticed by a third-party option, either.

Biden still had more support than Trump, even when a third-party “fusion ticket” with one Democrat and one Republican was added to the mix, Monmouth found.

With a fusion ticket as an option, 37% of respondents would definitely or probably vote for Biden whereas 28% would definitely or probably vote for Trump. Thirty percent of respondents would entertain voting for the fusion ticket.

Democrats have expressed concern that a third-party ticket would siphon votes from Biden and spoil his chances in 2024. The presence of a third-party fusion ticket detracts votes from both Biden and Trump, but not enough for the ticket to be a “spoiler,” the polling report said.

Support for a fusion option declines when actual candidates are named on the ticket.

When the poll introduced a potential ticket of Democratic West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin and Republican former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, 44% of respondents definitely would not vote for the option. Only 2% of respondents definitely would vote for the hypothetical Manchin-Huntsman ticket.

Manchin and Huntsman headlined a town hall on Monday hosted by the nonprofit No Labels, which is pursuing ballot access to enter a “unity” ticket, similar to the Monmouth poll’s fusion ticket, in the 2024 race. The event heightened speculation that Manchin could have presidential aspirations for 2024.

Read: Sen. Joe Manchin fuels rumors of a third-party 2024 presidential bid

If 2024 turns out to be a Biden vs. Trump vs. Manchin-Huntsman race, Biden would likely get 40% of the vote, Trump 34% and Manchin-Huntsman 16%, the poll found.

“Some voters clearly feel they have to back a candidate they don’t really like. That suggests there may be an opening for a third party in 2024, but when you drill down further, there doesn’t seem to be enough defectors to make that a viable option,” Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth Polling Institute, said.

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July 21, 2023
‘The war on remote work is not over.’ But one group in particular is heading back to the office.

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As the fight between bosses and workers over returning to the office keeps entering new rounds, new data show how much in-office attendance ramped up last year — especially for white-collar workers with high levels of education.

But even still, the return to the office has been two different stories for men and women. From 2021 to 2022, men spent more time at the workplace while women spent the same amount of time working from home year-over-year.

Last year, 34% of workers said they worked from home at least part of the time, according to the annual Bureau of Labor Statistics survey of how Americans spend their time.

That was down from the 38% of employed people who said the same in 2021 — and a deeper look into Thursday’s data reveals an even more pronounced, but uneven, reduction in the number of people who are working remotely.

More than one quarter of men in 2022 said they spend at least some of their working time at home, while 41% of women said they had work-from-home in their job schedule. One year earlier, it was a different story for men, but not for women. Over one-third of men, 35%, said working from home was part of their routine while 42% of women said the same.

It may be a reminder of the juggle that women face between their personal and professional lives. For example, in homes with children under age 6, women spent just over an hour each day caring for their children while men in those households spent half that amount. That breakdown was unchanged between 2022 and 2021, the data showed.

Meanwhile, the return-to-office trend accelerated for more educated workers from 2021 to 2022. In 2021, 60% of people with at least a bachelor’s degree said they did some of their work from home. In 2022, the share fell to 54% doing some work from home.

When the pandemic shut down offices and other workplaces, people with higher levels of education often had greater chances of being able to stay home while they worked.

That dynamic is still at play now, although the differences between groups are becoming less stark. Last year and in 2021, the share of people with no college degree who said they worked from home at least some of the time stayed below 20%.

It’s unclear what was driving highly-educated workers to spend more time in the office between 2021 and 2022, said Stephan Meier, a Columbia Business School professor who chairs the school’s management division. Some of it could be attributed to return-to-office policies, but it might also be due to growing comfort with vaccination and public-health measures as the pandemic continued, he said.

“What I would care about is who goes to the office and who doesn’t want to go to the office,” he said.

The overall change in numbers is not “a major shift,” said Meier, who teaches students and executives about the future of work. “What those numbers show to me is that the war on remote work is not over.”

The year-over-year decline fits with the trends that Nicholas Bloom, a professor of economics at Stanford University, is seeing in his own research analyzing where people say they are working these days. Even if there’s less remote work happening, Bloom said, his research shows the “rate of decline is itself declining.”

Bloom thinks the rate of remote work may bottom out next year. “I predict longer-run, from 2025 onwards, this will start to rise again as remote-work technology — hardware, software, [virtual reality, augmented reality], etc. — gets better and continues the long-run rise of [working from home].”

Between May and December 2020, Bureau of Labor Statistics research showed, 42% of employed people said they spent least some of their time working from home as COVID-19 upended daily life.

As a whole, the BLS survey on how Americans use their time paints a picture of a slow return to the office — but not necessarily a return to the way things were before COVID-19.

Before the pandemic, 24% of workers said they spent some of their time working from home, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

This year, office foot traffic has edged higher, but the rise is incremental and uneven. Earlier in June, average weekly office occupancy surpassed 50% for the first time in three months, according to an ongoing gauge from Kastle Systems, a security-technology provider.

One week later, the company’s barometer of average occupancy across 10 major cities dropped back below 50%. In the data from early June, Tuesdays tended to be the busiest days for offices, and Fridays were the slowest.

Meier said he wouldn’t be surprised if next year’s time-use survey reveals even less time spent working from home. But this is a transitional moment in which businesses are figuring out the particular version of hybrid work duties and office setups that work for them, he said.

“Personally, I do think there is something magical about being in person,” Meier said. “Does it need to be five days a week? Absolutely not.”

See also: Salesforce is trying a ‘cute gimmick’ to get workers back to the office, but it may fall flat

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June 23, 2023
What It Would Take to Beat Trump in the Primaries

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This should be a window of widening opportunity and optimism for the Republicans chasing Donald Trump, the commanding front-runner in the 2024 GOP presidential race.

Instead, this is a time of mounting uncertainty and unease.

Rather than undermine Trump’s campaign, his indictment last week for mishandling classified documents has underscored how narrow a path is available for the candidates hoping to deny him the nomination. What should have been a moment of political danger for Trump instead has become another stage for him to demonstrate his dominance within the party. Almost all GOP leaders have reflexively snapped to his defense, and polls show that most Republican voters accept his vitriolic claims to be the victim of a politicized and illegitimate prosecution.

As GOP partisans rally around him amid the proliferating legal threats, recent national surveys have routinely found Trump attracting support from more than 50 percent of primary voters. Very few primary candidates in either party have ever drawn that much support in polls this early in the calendar. In an equally revealing measure of his strength, the choice by most of the candidates running against Trump to echo his attacks on the indictment shows how little appetite even they believe exists within the party coalition for a full-on confrontation with him.

The conundrum for Republicans is that polls measuring public reaction to Trump’s legal difficulties have also found that outside the Republican coalition, a significant majority of voters are disturbed by the allegations accumulating against him. Beyond the GOP base, most voters have said in polls that they believe his handling of classified material has created a national-security risk and that he should not serve as president again if he’s convicted of a crime. Such negative responses from the broader electorate suggest that Trump’s legal challenges are weakening him as a potential general-election candidate even as they strengthen him in the primary. It’s as if Republican leaders and voters can see a tornado on the horizon—and are flooring the gas pedal to reach it faster.

This far away from the first caucuses and primaries next winter—and about two months from the first debate in August—the other candidates correctly argue that it’s too soon to declare Trump unbeatable for the nomination.

Republicans skeptical of Trump hold out hope that GOP voters will grow weary from the cumulative weight of the multiple legal proceedings converging on him. And he still faces potential federal and Fulton County Georgia charges over his role in trying to overturn the 2020 election.

Republican voters “are going to start asking who else is out there, who has a cleaner record, and who is not going to have the constant political volleying going on in the background of their campaign,” Dave Wilson, a prominent Republican and social-conservative activist in South Carolina, told me. “They are looking for someone they can rally behind, because Republicans really want to defeat Joe Biden.”

Scott Reed was the campaign manager in 1996 for Bob Dole’s presidential campaign and is now a co-chair of Committed to America, a super PAC supporting Mike Pence. Reed told me he also believes that “time is Trump’s enemy” as his legal troubles persist. The belief in GOP circles that “the Department of Justice is totally out of control” offers Trump an important shield among primary voters, Reed said. But he believes that as the details about Trump’s handling of classified documents in the latest indictment “sink in … his support is going to begin to erode.” And as more indictments possibly accumulate, Reed added, “I think the repetition of these proceedings will wear him down.”

Yet other strategists say that the response so far among both GOP voters and elected officials raises doubts about whether any legal setback can undermine Trump’s position. (The party’s bottomless willingness throughout his presidency to defend actions that previously had appeared indefensible, of course, points toward the same conclusion.) The veteran GOP pollster Whit Ayres has divided the GOP electorate into three categories: about 10 percent that is “never Trump,” about 35 percent that is immovably committed to him, and about half that he describes as “maybe Trump,” who are generally sympathetic to the former president and supportive of his policies but uneasy about some of his personal actions and open to an alternative.

Those “maybe Trump” voters are the key to any coalition that can beat him in the primary race, Ayres told me, but as the polls demonstrate, they flock to his side when he’s under attack. “Many of them had conflict with siblings, with parents, sometimes with children, sometimes even with spouses, about their support for Donald Trump,” Ayres said. “And they are very defensive about it. That makes them instinctively rally to Donald Trump’s defense, because if they suggest in any way that he is not fit for office, then that casts aspersions on their own past support for him.”

This reflex helps explain the paradoxical dynamic of Trump’s position having improved in the GOP race since his first indictment in early April. A national CBS survey conducted after last week’s federal indictment found his support in the primary soaring past 60 percent for the first time, with three-fourths of Republican voters dismissing the charges as politically motivated and four-fifths saying he should serve as president even if convicted in the case.

The Republicans dubious of Trump focus more on the evidence in the same surveys that voters outside the GOP base are, predictably, disturbed by the behavior alleged in the multiplying cases against him. Trump argues that Democrats are concocting these allegations because they fear him more than any other Republican candidate, but Wilson accurately pointed out that many Democrats believe Trump has been so damaged since 2020 that he might be the easiest GOP nominee to beat. “I don’t think Democrats really want someone other than Trump,” Wilson said. Privately, in my conversations with them, plenty of Democratic strategists agree.

Ayres believes that evidence of the resistance to Trump in the wider electorate may eventually cause more GOP voters to think twice about nominating him. Polls have usually found that most Republican voters say agreement on issues is more important for them in choosing a nominee than electability. But Ayres said that in focus groups he’s conducted, “maybe Trump” voters do spontaneously raise concerns about whether Trump can win again given everything that’s happened since Election Day, including the January 6 insurrection. “Traditionally an electability argument is ineffective in primaries,” Ayres said. “The way the dynamic usually works is ‘I like Candidate X, therefore Candidate X has the best chance to win.’ The question is whether the electability argument is more potent in this situation than it was formerly … and the only answer to that is: We will find out.” One early measure suggests that, for now, the answer remains no. In the new CBS poll, Republicans were more bullish on Trump’s chances of winning next year than on any other candidate’s.

Read: Will Trump get a speedy trial?

Another reason the legal proceedings haven’t hurt Trump more is that his rivals have been so reluctant to challenge him over his actions—or even to make the argument that multiple criminal trials would weaken him as a general-election candidate. But there are some signs that this may be changing: Pence, Nikki Haley, and Tim Scott this week somewhat criticized his behavior, though they were careful to also endorse the former president’s core message that the most recent indictment is illegitimate and politically motivated. Some strategists working in the race believe that by the first Republican debate in August, the other candidates will have assailed Trump’s handling of the classified documents more explicitly than they are now.

Still, Trump’s fortifications inside the party remain formidable against even a more direct assault. Jim McLaughlin, a pollster for Trump’s campaign, points out that 85 to 90 percent of Republicans approve of his record as president. In 2016, Trump didn’t win an absolute majority of the vote in any contest until his home state of New York, after he had effectively clinched the nomination; now he’s routinely drawing majority support in polls.

In those new national polls, Trump is consistently attracting about 35 to 40 percent of Republican voters with a four-year college degree or more, roughly the same limited portion he drew in 2016. But multiple recent surveys have found him winning about 60 percent of Republican voters without a college degree, considerably more than he did in 2016.

McLaughlin maintains that Trump’s bond with non-college-educated white voters in a GOP primary is as deep as Bill Clinton’s “connection with Black voters” was when he won the Democratic primaries a generation ago. Ayres, though no fan of Trump, agrees that the numbers he’s posting among Republicans without a college degree are “breathtaking.” That strength may benefit Trump even more than in 2016, because polling indicates that those non-college-educated white voters will make up an even bigger share of the total GOP vote next year, as Trump has attracted more of them into the party and driven out more of the suburban white-collar white voters most skeptical of him.

But if Trump looks stronger inside the GOP than he was in 2016, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis may also present a more formidable challenger than Trump faced seven years ago. On paper, DeSantis has more potential than any of the 2016 contenders to attract the moderate and college-educated voters most dubious of Trump and peel away some of the right-leaning “maybe Trump” voters who like his policies but not his behavior. The optimistic way of looking at Trump’s imposing poll numbers, some GOP strategists opposed to him told me, is that he’s functionally the incumbent in the race and still about half of primary voters remain reluctant to back him. That gives DeSantis an audience to work with.

In practice, though, DeSantis has struggled to find his footing. DeSantis’s choice to run at Trump primarily from his right has so far produced few apparent benefits for him. DeSantis’s positioning has caused some donors and strategists to question whether he would be any more viable in a general election, but it has not yet shown signs of siphoning away conservative voters from Trump. Still, the fact that DeSantis’s favorability among Republicans has remained quite high amid the barrage of attacks from Trump suggests that if GOP voters ultimately decide that Trump is too damaged, the Florida governor could remain an attractive fallback option for them.

Whether DeSantis or someone else emerges as the principal challenger, the size of Trump’s advantage underscores how crucial it will be to trip him early. Like earlier front-runners in both parties, Trump’s greatest risk may be that another candidate upsets him in one of the traditional first contests of Iowa and New Hampshire. Throughout the history of both parties’ nomination contests, such a surprise defeat has tended to reset the race most powerfully when the front-runner looks the most formidable, as Trump does now. “If Trump is not stopped in Iowa or New Hampshire, he will roll to the nomination,” Reed said.

Even if someone beats Trump in one of those early contests, though, history suggests that they will still have their work cut out for them. In every seriously contested Republican primary since 1980, the front-runner as the voting began has been beaten in either Iowa or New Hampshire. That unexpected defeat has usually exposed the early leader to a more difficult and unpredictable race than he expected. But the daunting precedent for Trump’s rivals is that all those front-runners—from Ronald Reagan in 1980 to George W. Bush in 2000 to Trump himself in 2016—recovered to eventually win the nomination. In his time as a national figure, Trump has shattered a seemingly endless list of political traditions. But to beat him next year, his GOP rivals will need to shatter a precedent of their own.

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Ronald Brownstein

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June 15, 2023
Most Americans aren’t happy with how much income tax they paid this year

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Americans’ discontent with the size of their federal income-tax bill is at a two-decade high, according to a new poll — even though Congress hasn’t passed any direct income-tax increases in recent years.

One month after the 2023 tax season’s conclusion, 51% of respondents in a newly released Gallup poll said their income taxes were not fair. That’s up from 44% last year and marks a record high since 1997, when Gallup’s pollsters started asking how people felt about their income-tax bills.

Meanwhile, 46% of people said they were paying a fair amount of income tax. That basically matched the dim mood over two decades ago, in in 1999, when 45% said that they were paying a fair amount.

Six in 10 poll participants said their federal income taxes were “too high,” pollsters said. 2001 was the last time that share of people felt the same way, Gallup said.

Feeling the squeeze: Grocery prices are rising more slowly, but food insecurity is surging among low-income Americans

Gallup pollsters spoke with more than 1,000 people, doing their field work through most of April.

The poll comes during a fierce debate about whether the wealthiest taxpayers, as well as corporations, are paying enough in taxes. The Biden administration has been pressing for higher tax rates on high earners. A Democratic-controlled Congress last year passed a law with an $80 billion funding infusion for the IRS over a 10-year span in part to launch more audits of rich individuals and corporations.

Many Americans walked away from tax season with income-tax refunds that were smaller than a year ago. That’s due, at least in part, to the end of pandemic-era boosts to certain credits, tax experts have previously told MarketWatch.

Both backdrops might be at play in the public mood on taxes, observers noted, and political affiliation could have something to do with these changes, Gallup said. Only one-third of Republicans said their income taxes this year were fair, for example — that’s down from 63% in 2020, the last full year of the Trump administration.

The change in Republican sentiment could be why there was a heavy swing since 2020, when 59% said their taxes represented a fair number. In 2020, 56% of political independents said their taxes were fair, and that percentage fell to 45% a few years later. Among Democrats, meanwhile, the 63% saying their taxes were fair was virtually unchanged over that span.

Republicans “are certainly more frustrated now with Biden in office,” said Jeff Jones, senior editor of the Gallup poll. “But they are even more frustrated than they were when Obama was in office.”

Democrat Joe Biden campaigned in 2020 on pledges to raise taxes on corporations and households earning over $400,000 a year and not on those making less than that. So far, the president has not been able to turn proposals like a billionaire’s minimum tax or a higher top tax rate into law.

The real tax-policy fight brewing in the background is the 2025 expiration of Trump-era tax cuts, experts have said.

In the sweeping 2017 tax-code overhaul, Congress reduced five of seven income-tax brackets and boosted commonly used features of the tax code, including payouts for the child tax credit and the standard deduction. But some of those tax cuts were scheduled to sunset, while others were permanent.

Another potential shaping the mood on taxes is the broader economy and recent tax season, Jones said. One possibility, he noted, is that some people are getting pushed to higher tax brackets with pay raises meant to keep up with inflation. (Tax brackets are adjusted annually to account for inflation.)

While inflation is still pinching wallets, tax refunds are lower than they were a year ago.

Refunds averaged just over $2,800, and that’s down more than 7% from a year earlier, according to IRS data through May 12.

So you know: What happens if you can’t pay your taxes? IRS has a payment plan — but read this before you sign up.

For his part, Lawrence Zelenak, who teaches tax law at Duke University, thinks the current darkening public mood “is largely a response to the disappearance of all the temporary pandemic-related tax relief,” he said.

In 2020 an estimated 60% of households ended up with no federal income-tax liability because they were making less and bringing in more through direct cash assistance from the federal government, according to Tax Policy Center estimates.

By 2022, an estimated 40% of households wouldn’t face any federal income tax, according to the nonpartisan think tank — which is more in line with levels seen before the pandemic.

Keep in mind: IRS will launch free tax-filing pilot in 2024. TurboTax, H&R Block and Republicans are opposed.

Refunds during 2022 got a kick from extragenerous payouts including the child tax credit, the child- and dependent-care credit and the earned-income tax credit.

Most taxpayers also got a chance to shave their tax bill with a temporary change that let them take the standard deduction and also write off a portion of their charitable donations. But the credits reverted to their prepandemic size, and the deduction on cash donations subsequently went away.

“With the end of the pandemic tax relief, many people have seen their income-tax liabilities go up, and it’s not surprising they see that as unfair,” Zelenak said. “So it may be the change more than the absolute level of tax.”

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May 19, 2023
The doctor won’t Zoom with you now: The telehealth frenzy is over.

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The pandemic opened the floodgates to telehealth. Now, many patients and doctors are curbing their enthusiasm for virtual care.

Four out of five primary-care doctors who had video visits with patients during the pandemic would prefer to provide just a small portion of care or no care at all via telemedicine in the future, according to a survey designed and analyzed by researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and published last month in Health Affairs, a peer-reviewed journal. And 60% of the doctors surveyed…

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May 5, 2023

Contraction in U.S. Factory Sector Deepened in December — S&P Global

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By Xavier Fontdegloria

The U.S. manufacturing sector contracted in December at the steepest pace since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic as demand remained subdued and production weakened, data from a purchasing managers survey showed Tuesday.

The S&P Global U.S. manufacturing PMI decreased to 46.2 in December from 47.7 in November, posting the lowest reading since the initial Covid-19 lockdown period in May 2020 and unchanged from the preliminary reading.

The index suggests factory activity shrank in December for a second consecutive month as any reading below 50.0 indicates contraction.

The contraction in activity was led by faster downturns in output and new orders, and companies attributed weak client demand to increasing economic uncertainty and high inflation, the report said.

“The manufacturing sector posted a weak performance as 2022 was brought to a close,” said Sian Jones, senior economist at S&P Global.

Concerns about the economic outlook turned firms more cautious in terms of hiring, and December saw job creation increasing only slightly and largely linked to skilled hires, she said.

Weaker activity at year-end led to easing price pressures, according to the survey. Both input and output inflation moderated at factory gates, and supply-chain bottlenecks were less apparent than earlier in the year.

“Slower upticks in inflation signal the impact of Federal Reserve policy on prices, but growing uncertainty and tumbling demand suggest challenges for manufacturers will roll over into the new year,” Ms. Jones said.

Write to Xavier Fontdegloria at xavier.fontdegloria@wsj.com

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January 3, 2023

Eat, drink and be merry: Here’s where shoppers have been spending the most money this holiday season

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Restaurants are set to become the biggest winners of a holiday season that could turn out to be the most normalized since the onset of the pandemic.

That’s according to a new Mastercard SpendingPulse survey released on Monday, which showed spending at dining establishments surging 15.1% over the 2021 holiday period. Total retail expenditures for the Nov. 1–to–Dec. 24 period in 2022 rose 7.6%, with in-store spending up 6.8% and online spending up 10.6%.

Restaurant spending beat out several other categories, such as apparel, where spending was up 4.4% from 2021, and electronics and jewelry, where a respective 5.3% and 5.4% less were spent, and department stores, which saw spending rise 1%.

“This holiday retail season looked different than years past,” said Steve Sadove, senior adviser for Mastercard and former CEO and chairman of Saks Inc. “Retailers discounted heavily but consumers diversified their holiday spending to accommodate rising prices and an appetite for experiences and festive gatherings postpandemic.”

Government data for November showed consumer spending was up just 0.1%, reflecting cautiousness among households and price cutting by retailers to lure those hesitant shoppers in. But the data also showed more spending on holiday recreation and travel, expected to go in the books as a busy season even if deadly winter storm may have wreaked havoc on the plans of many Americans over the Christmas weekend.

Of course, even as some merrymakers felt confident enough to make more plans and see more friends and family this year, the virus of course continues to cause illness and death. The U.S. reported 70,000 newly diagnosed cases for the first time since September on Thursday, while 422 people died of COVID-19 on Wednesday.

Don’t miss: As COVID cases rise, how to steer clear of viruses during the holiday season

Also see: 4 tips for staying healthy while traveling during this ‘tripledemic’ cold and flu season

The Mastercard SpendingPulse data measure in-store and online retail sales for all payment forms and are not inflation-adjusted.

As for the companies that might be benefiting from that increased traffic, the year-end cheer probably won’t be enough to make a dent in what has been a difficult year with would-be consumers juggling worries over inflation, rising interest rates and a war in Europe.

The Invesco Dynamic Leisure & Entertainment exchange-traded fund
PEJ,
+0.79%,
whose holdings include Chipotle Mexican Grill
CMG,
+0.32%,
McDonald’s
MCD,
+0.68%
and First Watch Restaurant Group
FWRG,
+0.42%,
has gained 6.5% to date in the fourth quarter and is down 20% for the year as of Thursday. The broad benchmark S&P 500
SPX,
+0.59%
is poised for a nearly 20% loss in 2022.

Read: How a Santa Claus rally, or lack thereof, sets the stage for the stock market in first quarter

And: Best stock picks for 2023: Here are Wall Street analysts’ most heavily favored choices

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December 26, 2022
Ron Johnson Does It Again

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Senator Ron Johnson has survived another hairy reelection bid to win a third term in Wisconsin. This time, however, no one should be surprised.

Six years ago, Johnson’s defeat seemed so likely that the national Republican Party pulled its money from Wisconsin, all but conceding his race. Johnson won anyway. This past August, a Marquette poll found him trailing his Democratic opponent, Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes, by seven points, 51 percent to 44 percent. This morning, when the race was called, Johnson was leading Barnes by about one percentage point.

Read: Mandela Barnes’s last punch

In the end, Johnson’s race wasn’t much of a nail-biter. Polls swung in his favor beginning in September, seemingly the result of a ruthless, well-funded—and to many Barnes supporters, downright racist—ad campaign blaming the lieutenant governor for a rise in violent crime and picturing him alongside other progressive Democrats of color.

Yet to Democrats, no setback in the scramble for the Senate was likely more frustrating than their failure to oust Johnson. The former businessman’s turn toward the conspiratorial wing of the GOP over the past few years had made him one of the worst-polling senators in the country and easily the most vulnerable Republican incumbent up for reelection this fall. Johnson became a vocal critic of COVID-19 vaccines and a champion of what he called “the vaccine injured.” He was embroiled in both impeachments of former President Donald Trump and downplayed the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021.

In Barnes, many Democrats believed they had found a rising national star—a 35-year-old onetime community organizer from a union family who could excite Black voters in Milwaukee and progressives in Madison while winning over working-class white voters in the rest of the state. Barnes, a former state legislator who won election as lieutenant governor in 2018, led the Democratic Senate primary from the get-go and ultimately won in a walk after his opponents dropped out and endorsed him in the closing weeks of the campaign. Barnes courted labor unions aggressively and broadcast the sunniest of TV ads that showed him unpacking groceries and hitting baseballs off a tee.

But Barnes had emerged from the progressive left’s Working Families Party, an ally of Senators Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. Exploiting fears over rising crime, Johnson’s campaign resurfaced images and quotes linking Barnes to the “Defund the police” movement from the aftermath of the George Floyd protests in 2020. Polls over the summer showed Barnes ahead of Johnson, but the Democrat’s standing dropped after weeks of crime-focused negative ads.

Wisconsin Democrats are left to wonder whether another one of their choices in the August primary—Alex Lasry, the son of a co-owner of the Milwaukee Bucks; Tom Nelson, a county executive; or Sarah Godlewski, the state treasurer—would have stood a better chance against Johnson. Perhaps Johnson has benefited from a bit of luck: The three years he has been on the ballot—2010, 2016, and now 2022—have all been relatively strong Republican years. (A few red-state Democratic senators, including Jon Tester of Montana and Sherrod Brown of Ohio, have had the similar good fortune of running in favorable environments for their party.)

Read: What Democrats don’t understand about Ron Johnson

Yet as I wrote last month, the polls that have pointed to Johnson’s unpopularity might not be capturing the full wellspring of his support in Wisconsin. To a person, the Republicans with whom I spoke said they viewed Johnson’s seemingly quixotic fight against conventional COVID treatments and vaccines not as a liability but as a strength, and that it was a big reason they supported him. During his first term, Johnson seemed to embody a traditional conservatism of low taxes and low spending, the small-government ethos of a fellow Wisconsite, former House Speaker Paul Ryan. He still champions those policies, but he has become far more closely linked to the establishment-toppling, media-fighting style of Trump. Johnson now inspires more passion on both sides, whether it’s hatred from his critics or sympathy from his supporters. “The news is just crucifying him constantly. They made him out to be a horrible person, and he’s not,” Ann Calvin, a 57-year-old who worked for years in an assisted-living facility, told me during my visit.

Like Trump, Johnson has also made a habit of defying expectations and foiling his critics. He did so again yesterday, completing his second comeback in six years to deprive Democrats of a seat that once seemed theirs to lose.

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Russell Berman

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November 9, 2022
Live updates: Election Day news, polls, and full midterms coverage

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President Joe Biden and former President Barack Obama attend a campaign for Democratic senatorial candidate John Fetterman and Democratic nominee for Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro in Philadelphia on November 5. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

President Joe Biden rallied with former President Barack Obama and top Pennsylvania Democratic candidates in North Philadelphia, where he criticized “mega MAGA Republicans” and touted his bipartisan infrastructure law.

“Elect John Fetterman in the Senate, please. He’ll protect and strengthen Social Security and Medicare. And will guarantee that veterans are always cared for. Always, always, always,” Biden told a packed crowd at The Liacouras Center on Temple University’s campus.

“My objective when I ran for president, was to build an economy from the bottom up and the middle out. It’s a fundamental shift, compared to the Oz and the mega MAGA Republican trickledown economics,” Biden said, referring to Fetterman’s GOP opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz.

As the crowd booed, the president continued, “No really. This ain’t your father’s Republican Party. This is a different breed of cat. I really mean it. Look, they’re all about the wealthier getting wealthy. And the wealthier staying wealthy. The middle class gets stiffed. The poor get poorer under their policy.”

Obama takes the stage: The former president offered a prebuttal to the possibility of Democratic losses.

“I can tell you from experience that midterms matter, a lot,” Obama said, a reference to the 2010 election that saw the GOP retake power in the House of Representatives during his first administration.

Obama’s speech was chock full of praise for Fetterman and Shapiro and disdain for their opponents.

“Josh’s opponent, woof. Oy vey,” Obama said. “He is willing to take the most extreme positions on pretty much everything.”

The former president hit Republican gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano’s position on abortion and recalled that he wore a Confederate war uniform in a photo in a 2013-14 faculty photo at the Army War College.

“Pennsylvania, let’s remember what century it is,” Obama said. “This would be funny, it would be an SNL skit, if it weren’t so serious. You cannot let somebody that detached from reality run your state.”

Obama couldn’t hide his disapproval for Oz.

“Who do you really think knows more about budgets and having to pay the bills, John Fetterman or Dr. Oz? Come on,” Obama said.

Pennsylvania’s Democratic candidates make their case: Fetterman, the Democratic nominee for Senate, and Josh Shapiro, the nominee for governor, both spoke before Obama at the Saturday night event.

Fetterman, who had a stroke in May, joked about appearing on stage just ahead of the former president.

“Let me tell you, anyone in recovery of having a stroke, really, the worst guy you have to go before, Barack Obama coming up has got to be the worst,” Fetterman said to laughs.

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November 6, 2022
Consumer mood indicates ‘a recession ahead’ amid stock, housing market ‘tumult’

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The numbers: Consumer sentiment improved slightly in October to 59.9, though Americans perceptions of the economy remained historically negative as a weak stock market and ongoing inflation weighed on their finances.

The University of Michigan’s gauge of consumer attitudes added 1.3 index points from 58.6 in September, and was up slightly from an initial reading of 59.8 earlier in the month.

Economists were expecting at a reading of 59.8, according to a Wall Street Journal poll.

Big picture: While the rate of inflation is no longer worsening, steady price increases for key items like food and shelter continue to weigh on the American mood.

“With sentiment sitting only 10 index points above the all-time low reached in June, the recent news of a slowdown in consumer spending in the third quarter comes as no surprise,’ wrote the survey’s director, Joanne Hsu, in a Friday note.

“While lower-income consumers reported sizable gains in overall sentiment, consumers with considerable stock market and housing wealth exhibited notable declines in sentiment, weighed down by tumult in those markets,” she added. “Given consumers’ ongoing unease over the economy, most notably this month among higher-income consumers, any continued weakening in incomes or wealth could lead to further pullbacks in spending that would reinforce other risks of recession.”

Key details: A gauge of consumer’s views of current conditions rose in October to 65.6 from 59.7 in September, while an indicator of expectations for the next six months fell to 56.2 from 58 last month.

Market reaction: U.S. stocks were trading mixed Friday morning, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
+2.59%
TK and the S&P 500 TK
SPX,
+2.46%.

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October 28, 2022
Inflation expectations rise in October as consumer mood stays somber

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The numbers: Consumer sentiment rose slightly to 59.8 in October even as Americans’ expectations for inflation worsened, according to a Friday survey.

The University of Michigan’s gauge of consumer attitudes added 1.2 index points from 58.6 in September.

Economists were expecting a reading of 59, according to a Wall Street Journal poll.

Consumer expectations for inflation over the next year rose to 5.1% from September’s one-year low of 4.7%, while expectations for inflation over the next 5 years ticked up to 2.9% from 2.7% last month.

Big picture: Americans are facing rising costs for key items like food and shelter as well as the impact of higher interest rates and the growing chance of a serious economic slowdown.

“Sentiment is now 9.8 points above the all-time low reached in June, but this improvement remains tentative, as the expectations index declined by 3% from last month,” wrote Joanne Hsu, director of the survey, on Friday. “Continued uncertainty over the future trajectory of prices, economies, and financial markets around the world indicate a bumpy road ahead for consumers.”

Key details: A gauge of consumer’s views of current conditions rose in October to 65.3 from 59.7 in September, while an indicator of expectations for the next six months fell to 56.2 from 58 last month.

Market reaction: U.S. stocks were trading mixed Friday morning, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
-1.34%
posting gains and the S&P 500
SPX,
-2.37%
index showing slight losses.

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October 14, 2022
What stock-market investors will be watching in Thursday’s inflation report

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Hotter-than-expected consumer-price index readings have triggered some of the stock market’s biggest one-day selloffs in 2022, serving to focus investor attention ahead of the latest measure of retail inflation on Thursday.

The September CPI reading from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which tracks changes in the prices paid by consumers for goods and services, is expected to show an 8.1% rise from a year earlier, slowing from an 8.3% year-over-year rise seen in August, according to a survey of economists by Dow Jones.

The S&P 500
SPX,
+0.23%
is down 24.7% year to date through Tuesday, according to Dow Jones Market Data. Most of the single days that are responsible for the decline occurred on or around CPI reports or Fed-related events, said Nicholas Colas, co-founder of DataTrek Research, in a note on Monday. Two of the S&P 500’s nine largest down days this year have come on days when CPI data was released, he noted.

Without those nine down days, the S&P 500 would have been up 8.6% year-to-date through the end of last week, Colas wrote.

For example, the S&P 500 recorded its biggest daily percentage fall since June 2020 last month on CPI reporting day, when the large-cap index shed 177.7 points, or 4.3%. On June 13, the S&P slid 3.9% and ended in a bear market after the May inflation report came in hotter than expected, with CPI hitting a 40-year high. Three days later, the index dropped 3.3% following what was then the Federal Reserve’s largest rate hike since 1994.

“Every time we see large selloffs it means investor confidence has collided with macro uncertainty,” warned Colas. “History shows that valuations suffer when this happens repeatedly. As we see further equity market volatility, keep your expectations for valuations modest. They will bottom when macro news is greeted with a rally that sticks, not one that fades away a few days later.”

See: It’s time to pivot from the idea of a Federal Reserve rate-hike pivot, Goldman Sachs strategists say

Bloomberg reported that JPMorgan’s analysts led by Andrew Tyler expect the stock market to tumble by 5% on Thursday if the inflation gauge comes in above August’s 8.3%. If the result is in line with the consensus, the S&P 500 would fall about 2%. On the flip side, the team forecast any softening inflation below 7.9% will spark an equity rally where the index may jump at least 2%.

However, Aoifinn Devitt, chief investment officer at Moneta, said the market would take the top-line number and react to it.

“I would expect to see a similar reaction to what we saw from Friday’s jobs report, which was a positive number that translates into a negative stock-market reaction,” Devitt told MarketWatch via phone. “Stock prices have adjusted. Earnings have adjusted, so there’s already been this kind of managing of expectations (which) leads me to take up some of this and try to be on the upside for some of these stocks, just because so much of the bad news is already there.”

See: Stocks could fall ‘another easy 20%’ and next drop will be ‘much more painful than the first’, Jamie Dimon says

The September inflation report is expected to show the headline CPI continued moderating as gasoline and commodity prices fell to the February level. But future expectations may have changed after OPEC+ announced last week its decision to cut production by 2 million barrels a day, which may have “lagging effect (on inflation data)“, according to Devitt.

Meanwhile, shelter costs and medical care services, which have been at the core of inflationary pressures and are sticky, are expected to increase by 0.7% on a monthly basis. The core CPI is expected to be running at a year-over-year pace of 6.5%, up from 6.3% in August.

“The bulls are desperate for signs that inflation is set to roll back to the Fed’s target — they may be mistaken, and while headline inflation is expected to fall thanks to a decline in energy, the Fed’s focus has shifted towards core CPI,” said Chris Weston, head of research of Pepperstone, in a Tuesday note.

“This is why core CPI will unlikely roll over anytime soon and why the Fed has made it clear they will hike further and leave the fed fund rate in restrictive territory for an extended period,” he wrote.

U.S. stocks finished mostly lower on Tuesday with the Nasdaq Composite dropping 1.1%, while the S&P 500 shed 0.6% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
+0.38%
edged up 0.1%. Stock-index futures pointed to a higher start Wednesday.

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October 12, 2022

Tag: polls

Top 20 Happiest Countries

Potential Factors Behind Life Evaluation

Conclusion

A new survey has found that Americans are overwhelmingly united on how much they hate each other.