Tuesday, June 18, 2013

The Other 44% Are Paying Attention

I find these statistics remarkable and more than a little disappointing:
According to the Wisconsin Economic Scorecard for the second quarter,
while a majority of residents (56 percent) say Wisconsin is “headed in the right direction,” only 28 percent view the economy as “good” and just 1 percent say it is “excellent.”

By comparison, 61 percent of the residents believed the state was headed in the right direction in the first quarter.

The proportion of Wisconsin residents who characterize the state economy as “poor” increased to 23 percent, up from 18 percent last quarter.

The Wisconsin Economic Scorecard is a quarterly poll of Wisconsin residents conducted by the Center for Urban Initiatives and Research (CUIR) at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in cooperation with WisBusiness.com and Milwaukee Public Radio (WUWM 89.7).
When every reliable and meaningful way of measuring our economic shows Wisconsin to be consistently in the bottom 10, regardless whether one is discussing job creation/loss or economic activity.

This number shows that importance of messaging. While the Republicans stick to the same two or three talking points, no matter how false they are, the Democrats are still running around like a herd of cats. I understand the strategy of not having a named candidate so that Team Walker doesn't have a target to aim at, but it also doesn't give their base anyone to rally around. The random and scattered press release isn't cutting it.

On the bright side of things, people are figuring things out in other areas:
Other major findings on the Scorecard included:
  • While spending on non-necessities such as restaurants and entertainment has increased slightly, so has the incidence of serious personal financial problems, such as affording home payments and paying for retirement.
  • Delaying work on major road construction projects is the most-preferred option for covering the shortfall in the state’s transportation fund; specifically, delaying an expansion of I-94 between Milwaukee and Illinois is supported by a majority (51.6 percent) of registered voters. Gasoline tax and passenger vehicle user-fee increases and the introduction of toll roads on some Wisconsin highways are the least-preferred options for covering the transportation fund shortfall.
  • Public confidence in the ability of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC) to fulfill its mission of bringing jobs to the state has decreased from 52 percent in November to 40 percent in June.
Now if we could find away to overcome the corporate media and their constant barrage of lies, maybe we could really make some headway in restoring our state.

4 comments:

  1. While the cream for the State Fair cream puffs come from Illinois because Wisconsin dairy farmers cannot guarantee enough supply.

    By every measure, Wisconsin is going to hell.

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  2. Check out the splits between Republicans and the rest of the state on those questions, both in this poll and others. The only reason the "right track" numbes are that high is because GOPs choose to love in a propaganda-fueled bubble (as shown by the 3/4 of GOPs who refuse to admit Wisconsin lags the nation in job creation, despite being in the bottom 10 for states).



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  3. The Democratic Party better get off their collective butts or we will not get the state back on its path again

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  4. Re the WEDC -- among Republican respondents, the confidence in WEDC actually went *UP* by ten percentage points since November.

    I kid you not.

    I was among the respondents for this poll, and when the 'confidence in WEDC' question came around, I asked for an option to respond NEGATIVE confidence! Since that wasn't available, I had to stick with ZERO confidence.

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