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Eric Black Ink

More evidence that we see what we want to see, mostly for partisan reasons

By Eric Black | 09/11/12

Pew Research Center just completed a poll of 1,012 adults, asking each respondent about the economy.

Among all respondents, 58% say they are hearing a mix of good and bad economic news, while 35% say they are hearing mostly bad news and 6% mostly good news. Now zooming on just those who said they were hearing mostly bad news about the economy, and breaking the respondents down by party, the percentage hearing mostly bad news:

  • Repubs: 60%
  • Dems: 15%
  • Independents: 36%.

As long as Pew has been asking the question there has been a difference by party, but the gap from 60 percent of Repubs hearing mostly bad news to just 15 percent of Dems is by far the largest Pews has recorded. The closer we get to the election, the bigger the gap. As recently as March of this year, the gap was just Repubs: 33, Dems: 18.

Here's the full Pew report.

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About the Author:

Eric Black

Eric Black

Eric Black writes Eric Black Ink for MinnPost. He is a former reporter for the Star Tribune and Twin Cities blogger.

Comments (6)

What this says is

Submitted by Dennis Tester on September 11, 2012 - 6:52pm.

85% of democrats are in denial, which makes sense to me.

Or, if you have been

Submitted by Neal Rovick on September 12, 2012 - 8:25am.

Or, if you have been convinced that the "lamestream" media is full of lies and you get all your news from a "fair and balanced" provider or a source that proclaims its "excellence in broadcasting", it is entirely possible that that is the split of positive/negative that you do hear from your media sources.

Conversely, Dennis

Submitted by Lora Jones on September 12, 2012 - 9:08am.

Anyone who says they're hearing "mostly bad news" obviously has their hands over their ears saying "no-no-no-no-no" a good portion of the time.

More Quantitative Easing!

Submitted by Peder DeFor on September 14, 2012 - 8:01am.

Obviously the Fed's decision to do another round of quantitative easing is not a good sign of the economy. That suggests to me that it's not that hard to figure out where the rose colored glasses are...

And why

Submitted by Paul Brandon on September 15, 2012 - 2:35pm.

is this obvious?
That's the whole point of the article!
Different things are 'obvious' to different people.

is not a good sign of the economy

Submitted by Paul Brandon on September 16, 2012 - 9:51am.

If you meant to say this, rather than
is not a good sign FOR the economy,
then I agree that it is obvious to me too that the economy is in trouble.
I'm still not sure who you think is wearing rose colored glasses, though.
I assume that you think that someone is offering easy, vague solutions and ignoring the real problems.
Who could that be?
This brings us back to the original topic.