The 11-part Heartland polls came out, and the Atlantic was quick to pick up on the psychological implications this recession has had on Americans, three years in. It turns out–yes, go figure–that we are just as determined in spirit (though with, as they call it, a renewed sense of “reluctant self-reliance”) and maybe a little more anxious, a caustic combination if you ask me. The polls make clear that we are undeterred, resilient in our belief that our efforts are going to make the change, not the institution. I wonder why…
More than three years into the deepest economic downturn since the Depression, Americans are resilient, wary, and divided.
That’s a central message from the 11 Allstate/National Journal Heartland Monitor polls conducted each quarter since April 2009. Across an array of questions, the polls show Americans to be resilient in their enduring conviction that their economic fate will turn primarily on their own efforts, rather than on large forces beyond their control; wary in their deepening skepticism that they can rely on any large institution, from banks and major corporations to Congress and the federal bureaucracy, to protect their interests; and deeply divided along partisan, ideological, and racial lines over Washington’s proper role in national life.
With more than 12,000 cumulative interviews, the surveys paint a portrait of a nation struggling to maintain faith in old beliefs about opportunity, self-sufficiency, and the rewards of hard work amid a nagging fear that the economy’s new dynamics expose average Americans to far more financial insecurity than earlier generations–and sentence the nation to more disruptive cycles of boom and bust. By overwhelming margins, those polled consistently have expressed faith that they can still achieve the American Dream, defined as the opportunity to advance as far as their talents will take them, and to live better than their parents. And yet, the surveys also find ominous cracks in that conviction, with many Americans, especially whites, growing pessimistic that their children will exceed, or even equal, their own standard of living.
This uneasy mix of anxiety and determination infuses all 11 surveys, which examined American attitudes toward a variety of economic trends and financial challenges from opportunity and risk to demographic change, global competition, the millennial generation’s prospects, homeownership, public and private debt, and the changing nature of retirement. The polls make clear that the recession landed in the center of American life with the force of a natural disaster, even rattling groups usually sheltered from economic instability and shaking beliefs that have persisted for generations on issues ranging from the nature of retirement to the value of a college education.
One theme consistently winding through the polls is the emergence of what could be called a “reluctant self-reliance,” as Americans look increasingly to reconstruct economic security from their own efforts, in part because they don’t trust outside institutions to provide it for them. The surveys suggest that the battered economy has crystallized a gestating crisis of confidence in virtually all of the nation’s public and private leadership class–from elected officials to the captains of business and labor. Taken together, the results render a stark judgment: At a time when they believe they are navigating much more turbulent economic waters than earlier generations, most Americans feel they are paddling alone. Shawn Kurt, an unemployed lumber-mill worker in Molalla, Ore., who responded to one survey, spoke for many when he plaintively declared, “I myself don’t see no one trying to help me.
This complex set of opinions creates a turbulent political climate for both parties as the 2012 campaign intensifies. Most immediately, the surveys point to a closely fought presidential contest. In Heartland Monitor surveys over the past two years, President Obama has maintained an equivocal but remarkably stable position, recently facing a narrow plurality of disapproval on his performance, while consistently holding a narrow majority of hope on the direction he has set for the nation. After successive sharp swings toward the Democrats in 2006 and 2008 and the Republicans in 2010, a broad array of the surveys’ findings indicate that the 2012 presidential race will once again divide the country almost in half, as did the 2000 and 2004 campaigns that inspired talk of the “50-50 nation.” No matter which side emerges from 2012 with an edge, the attitudes captured in the polls point toward years of sustained electoral volatility.
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