Trump Counties Give Economy Strongest Marks
November 23 2017 - 1:07PM
Dow Jones News
By Dante Chinni
People feel the condition of the economy personally, in their
job possibilities, their prospects of a raise and the prices they
pay. But ask whether they think the economy is getting better, and
another factor seems to come into play: their politics.
By most measures, the U.S. economy has continued to improve in
the past year. Perceptions differ, however. Places that voted for
President Donald Trump have seen big jumps in the percentage of
people who say the national economy is getting better, a Wall
Street Journal analysis of Gallup polling data finds. Communities
that voted for Democrat Hillary Clinton see less improvement or are
more likely to believe the economy is getting worse.
Comparing poll numbers and economic realities from different
communities in the third quarters of 2016 and 2017 shows how
influential politics may be to those points of view.
On the whole, the unemployment rate has fallen in all the county
types as classified by the American Communities Project at George
Washington University, which sorts U.S. counties into groups based
on common characteristics. Here are a few examples:
Some of those communities are wealthy and some less so. Some are
built around manufacturing or tech and others around agriculture or
service jobs. But unemployment dropped in nearly every one. (Not
all community types are shown on the chart above. You can see a map
showing all the types here.)
Against those job numbers, look at the percentages of people in
each community who believed the national economy was improving in
the third quarter of this year compared with last year:
There is little correlation between the change in unemployment
in these communities and the change in how their residents feel
about the direction of the national economy.
In the nation's big-city counties, for example, the unemployment
rate dropped by half a percentage point, but the number of people
who believed the economy was improving dropped by eight percentage
points.
Rural Middle America -- small-town communities that don't rely
heavily on agriculture -- saw a similar decline in unemployment,
but the number of people there who believed the economy was
improving climbed by nearly 16 percentage points.
One explanation for these community-level differences may lie in
the 2016 presidential results. Here is the change in unemployment
and the share of those who see the economy "getting better" for
each county type, sorted by Mr. Trump's margin of popular-vote
victory or defeat in each.
The county types at the top of the table posted the biggest
voting margins for Mr. Trump in 2016. They also experienced the
biggest jumps in those who believe the economy is getting
better.
Mr. Trump won counties classified as aging farmlands and
evangelical hubs by more than 50 percentage points. In each of
those classifications, the percentage of people who believed the
economy was improving climbed by 29 points or more.
In the two county types where Mr. Trump lost by the largest
margins, big cities and urban suburbs, the "economy getting better"
numbers were flat or declining.
These numbers don't necessarily prove that a place's politics is
directly tied to how people there see the economy. It is possible,
for instance, that a one-point drop in the unemployment rate in
evangelical hub counties feels bigger to the people there because
their jobless rates historically have been higher and incomes lower
than the national average.
But the numbers suggest that the way people view those realities
is greatly affected by their political outlook.
They are also a reminder that the economy remains an area of
relative political strength for Mr. Trump, particularly among the
voters who make up his base.
When The Wall Street Journal and NBC News last month surveyed
Trump counties -- the counties considered most responsible for Mr.
Trump's election victory -- it found that positive views of the
president's handling of the economy outweighed negative views by 10
percentage points. That result stood in contrast with views of Mr.
Trump's job performance overall, which was slightly more negative
than positive.
Respondents also viewed Mr. Trump's stewardship of the economy
more favorably than unfavorably in the last Journal/NBC News
national poll, in October, at the same time Mr. Trump's job
approval dropped to 38%, its lowest point since he took office.
In short, views of the economy appear to be helping the
president politically, particularly among his core voters. But they
don't seem to be a factor winning over additional supporters for
Mr. Trump.
Write to Dante Chinni at Dante.Chinni@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 23, 2017 13:52 ET (18:52 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2017 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.