WASHINGTON — The number of Americans who believe that the nation is headed in the right direction has roughly tripled since Barack Obama’s election, and the public overwhelmingly blames the excesses of the financial industry, rather than the new president, for turmoil in the economy, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
Obama continues to benefit from a broadly held perception that others should bear the bulk of responsibility for economic problems that confront his administration. Americans see plenty of offenders, but about a quarter blame the president and his team for an economy that’s in the ditch.
Despite the increasing optimism about the future, the nation’s overall mood remains gloomy, and doubts are rising about some of the administration’s prescriptions for the economic woes. Independents are less solidly behind Obama than they have been, fewer Americans express confidence that his economic programs will work, barely half of the country approves of how the president is dealing with the budget deficit, and the political climate is again polarized.
The percentage of Americans in the new poll who said the country is on the right track still stands at just 42 percent, but that is the highest percentage saying so in five years and marks a sharp turnabout from last fall, when as many as nine in 10 said the country was heading in the wrong direction. Fifty-seven percent now consider the nation as moving on the wrong track.
For the first time since late 2004, the gap between the numbers saying the economy is getting better and those saying it’s getting worse is in the single digits (27 percent to 36 percent).
Two-thirds of Americans approve of the way Obama is handling the country’s top job, and six in 10 give him good marks on issue No. 1, the flagging economy.
The random phone poll of 1,000 people conducted Thursday through Sunday has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
