And now here comes the Los Angeles Times with virtually identical findings. For leftists, the anxiety is economic inequality, especially class envy at the corporate rich. For conservatives, rapid social change, especially moral decay and unchecked immigration, is generating tremendous fear. Huge pessimism is the constant theme across the spectrum.
See, "Poll On the left and right, voters express anxiety over future":
On the left and right, voters express anxiety over the future in a new poll https://t.co/YhMV0PM0mc pic.twitter.com/WFVcaBv6Pd
— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) November 9, 2015One year before the presidential election, a pervasive disquiet has shaped voter attitudes, with a majority of Republicans pessimistic about moral values and the increasing diversity of the country's population, and Democrats uneasy about an economy they see as tilted toward the rich.
By more than 2 to 1, voters both nationally and in California say they are more worried than hopeful about changes in the country's morals and values. By nearly the same margin, more worry than express hope about the changing national economy. And by 5 to 1, they say they are worried about how the nation's politics have changed.
California voters and those nationwide largely agree on those points but diverge on others. Nationally, for example, voters divide almost evenly on whether cultural diversity worries them or makes them hopeful. In California, those who are "mainly hopeful" about the changes caused by cultural diversity outnumber those "mainly worried" 56% to 41%.
Those concerns — detailed in a new USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll, conducted online by SurveyMonkey — have been driving voter decisions about which candidates they favor for president. Both in California and nationwide, they have helped propel two nontraditional candidates, businessman Donald Trump and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, to the forefront of the Republican field...
Voters' downbeat mood is particularly notable in light of economic numbers typically associated with good times. The nation's unemployment rate, 5%, is the lowest since April 2008, and the economy has grown steadily, albeit slowly, since the recession officially ended in June 2009.
Still, by 70% to 29%, voters see the country as headed in the wrong direction. California voters are only marginally more positive, with 63% saying the country is headed the wrong way and 34% seeing the nation as being on the right path.
That sense of the country headed the wrong way has been true now for a dozen years, through two presidencies, for "the longest period of sustained pessimism in more than a generation," said Neil Newhouse, a veteran Republican pollster who advised Mitt Romney's presidential campaign in 2012.
Pessimism is particularly profound among white voters, especially those without a college education. In California, fewer than 1 in 4 non-college-educated whites say the country is on the right track, and 70% say they are worried about the way the economy has changed. Nationally, the worried share among the group is even higher, 74%.
By contrast, racial and ethnic minority voters have a considerably more upbeat view, particularly those who have graduated from college.
Those two groups — whites who have not graduated from college and minorities who have — stand at opposite ends of the political spectrum. Non-college-educated whites have become a bulwark for Republicans, while upwardly mobile minority voters have reshaped the Democratic Party.
In California, where about half of college-educated minority voters are optimistic about the economy, the two groups are of similar size, each about one-fifth of the electorate. Nationally, whites without college degrees outnumber college-educated minorities by about 3 to 1.
Among the Republicans in the presidential race, several candidates have tapped into the pessimistic mood of whites who did not graduate from college, none more directly than Trump, whose slogan "Make America great again" expresses a sense of better times gone.
Trump has a significant lead among white voters nationwide who have not graduated from college. Rubio, by contrast, does notably better with the college-educated; he is in first place with that group of voters among Republicans in California.
Trump's strongest base of support, however, comes from those troubled by the effects of immigration.
Nationally, voters divide closely over whether "immigrants from other countries mainly strengthen American society" or "mainly weaken" it, with 49% seeing immigrants as a source of strength and 43% as a weakness.
In California, with its much larger population of minorities, 59% see immigrants strengthening America and 35% say they "mainly weaken American society."
Trump's backers are overwhelmingly in the "mainly weaken" camp: 73% in California and 82% nationally take that view...
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