WASHINGTON — The economic vision President Barack Obama laid out in last Tuesday’s State of the Union has widespread appeal, as do many of his key policy proposals — but many Americans still see that agenda as unlikely to help them on a personal level.
Obama was addressing a broad swath of the U.S. with his focus on “middle-class economics.” Even as a recent recovery has made the economy slightly less of a priority than in past years, it remains among the issues that most concern the public, and Americans at every income level between $30,000 and $100,000 are likely to identify their own earnings as being middle-class. Most people think income inequality is increasing, and 2014 exit polling found that nearly two-thirds of voters nationally thought the U.S. economy favored the wealthy.
But while some of the specific, progressive ideas the president proposed — from raising the minimum wage to leveling the pay gap and providing for childcare — are popular, they’re also not ideas most Americans see as likely to affect their own lives:
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The HuffPost/YouGov poll consisted of 1,000 completed interviews conducted Dec. 4-8 among U.S. adults using a sample selected from YouGov’s opt-in online panel to match the demographics and other characteristics of the adult U.S. population. Factors considered include age, race, gender, education, employment, income, marital status, number of children, voter registration, time and location of Internet access, interest in politics, religion and church attendance.
The Huffington Post has teamed up with YouGov to conduct daily opinion polls. You can learn more about this project and take part in YouGov’s nationally representative opinion polling. Data from all HuffPost/YouGov polls can be found here. More details on the poll’s methodology are available here.
