It’s No Longer the Economy, Stupid

It’s no longer the economy, stupid â€" it’s the government.

As my colleague Allison Kopicki has noted, a new Gallup poll finds that more Americans are now citing the government, politicians or Congress when they are asked to name the “most important problem” facing the country than ever before.

This presents a milestone for two reasons: First, from February 2008 up until last week, the economy (or jobs/unemployment) had been consistently named by poll respondents as the biggest problem facing the country every time the poll question was asked, according to Tracey Sugar at Gallup. (Before February 2008, the situation in Iraq was the most-cited problem for nearly four years running.) Dysfunctional government has now knocked the economy and jobs out of that top slot.

Results for this the latest Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted Oct. 3-6, 2013, with a random sample of 1,028 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 4 percentage points.

The share of Americans naming economic issues as the country’s biggest problem had been declining even before the government shutdown, which seemed to deliver the final blow. Other measurements of public views of the economy had also been improving, at least until recently; for example, it’s still just a minority of Americans who say now is a good time to find a quality job, but the share of people saying this had been increasing in the last year.

The data points in that chart go through early September only, though. Since then, the fiscal showdown has coincided with a deterioration in views of the economy as measured by other Gallup research.

The second reason the “most important problem” trend is striking is that the share of Americans naming the government â€" 33 percent â€" is at its highest level since Gallup began asking the “most important question” in 1939. In fact, says Ms. Sugar, this was the first time on record that dissatisfaction with the government claimed the top slot at all.