Bad news for Trump — 60% of Americans say the surging stock market doesn't affect them, Business Insider - Business Insider Singapore
by Yusuf Khan, Business Insider US- According to a new poll from Financial Times and the Peter G Peterson Foundation, most Americans don’t seem to care that much about the stock market’s performance.
- In the poll, 61% of Americans said that stock movements “had little or no effect on their financial well being.”
- Only 40% of respondents in the poll said (correctly) that the stock market had gone up this year.
- Donald Trump has staked his reelection chances on the health of the US economy, and touts equity market gains on Twitter.
- View Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
Most Americans don’t seem to care that much about the stock market’s performance.
According to a poll, conducted by the Financial Times, and the Peter G Peterson Foundation, 61% of Americans said that stock movements “had little or no effect on their financial well being,” compared to the 39% who said “stock market performance had a ‘very strong’ or ‘somewhat strong’ impact.”
The Financial Times added that only 40% of those surveyed said the stock market has been going up in 2019, and 18% even said it decreased. The S&P 500 has been hovering at record highs, and the index is up 26% this year.
The strength of the US economy may even be key to Donald Trump’s reelection chances.
Those who said they voted Republican were more likely to correctly say the stock market had gone up than Democrats – 58% of Republicans compared to just 25% of Democrats, respectively.
The poll is part of a year-long survey tracking Americans’ thoughts on Trump, and if he has made things better or worse, as we move closer to an election next year.
The newspaper outlined the methodology behind the FT-Peterson poll: It “was conducted online by Global Strategy Group, a Democratic polling group, and North Star Opinion Research, a Republican group, between November 19 and November 24. It reflects the opinions of 1,010 likely voters nationwide, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.”
Trump has been very bullish about the stock market this year, and the FT says he has staked his election chances on the health of the markets.
His tweet from three days ago touted US equity gains: “Stock Markets Up Record Numbers. For this year alone, Dow up 18.65%, S&P up 24.36%, Nasdaq Composite up 29.17%. ‘It’s the economy, stupid.'”
In a separate poll from the survey respondents, 64% said that they either felt worse, or no better off financially, since Trump was elected as president in 2016.
Read the Financial Times story here.
