Frank Newport of Gallup gave an interview at Marketplace today. Excerpt:
Newport: ...We looked at consumer confidence by every state in the union and the District of Columbia for the first six months of 2012 aggregating lots of data. Bottom line is: if you want to go where people are upbeat on a relative basis on the economy go anywhere near the nation’s capital -- that would be D.C. -- people who live in the district say: “Hey! The economy is going very well.”
Plus, a bunch of states like Minnesota, North and South Dakota and Iowa, those states also have very positive people. Then Maryland and Virginia of course, contiguous to the District of Columbia, they too are positive because I guess, there’s lots of activity in the District of Columbia.
Excuse me for interrupting, but that DC positivity is coming from lobbyists and public servants who always seem a little out of touch with reality. They have jobs.
Horwich: And where are the bummed out people?
Newport: Well, it’s an interesting conglomeration of states but the worst is West Virginia. It’s kind of really worse, people who live in West Virginia are really depressed when we call them and ask them how’s the U.S. economy is doing. They’re significantly below a couple of other southern states which are two and three, Arkansas and Mississippi. But then there some states like Wyoming and Montana, and Nevada which are far away from the South that also have pretty negative people when we ask them about the economy. There some other southern states where people look pretty dour about the economy as well.
Maybe that's because Arkansas and Wyoming and those places that have at least one whole US senator for every ten or a dozen citizens believe the rapture is any day now so consumer confidence is irrelevant. Plus it's hot and Gallup didn't even offer them a beer.
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