Watching TV these days, or reading any media, one could easily be forgiven for thinking Democrats and Republicans incapable of agreeing on anything as months of divisive programming have embedded record levels of cognitive dissonance.
So imagine our glee when we glanced at Gallup’s latest economic confidence survey.
First, Americans are now overwhelmingly more confident in the economy since before the election, moving from a slightly negative evaluation (-10) to a slightly positive one (+3). Gallup’s U.S. Economic Confidence Index had been consistently negative throughout the year leading up to the election.
And Second, Democrats and Republicans are in almost perfect agreement on whether the economy is getting better or worse (around 44-49% of them).
Of course, as the chart above shows, this ‘coming together’ of opinion still shows dramatic bias:
After Trump won last week’s election, Republicans and Republican-leaning independents now have a much more optimistic view of the U.S. economy’s outlook than they did before the election. Just 16% of Republicans said the economy was getting better in the week before the election, while 81% said it was getting worse. Since the election, 49% say it is getting better and 44% worse.
Conversely, Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents’ confidence in the economy plummeted after the election. Before the election, 61% of Democrats said the economy was getting better and 35% worse. Now, Democrats are evenly divided, with 46% saying it is getting better and 47% saying it is getting worse.
The bottom line is – for now – that the election of Trump has transformed the way Republicans and Democrats view the economy, particularly in their assessments of whether it is getting better or worse. However, it’s too early to say whether these are sustainable gains in confidence.
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