An economy in pieces - a news analysis

"It's the economy, stupid" may have been born of a Clinton-era campaign mantra from 1992, but the same holds true in the minds of voters for this John McCain-Barack Obama presidential contest, according to Gallup polling.

"As [the two candidates] figuratively round the bend into the final stretch of the 2008 presi-dential race, a new Gallup poll identifies the economy as the runaway top election issue for Americans," an Oct. 29 Gallup Daily report states.

Out of 12 policy issues, including Iraq, energy costs, taxes, terrorism, healthcare and the envi-ronment, 55 percent of respondents named the economy as "extremely important" in choosing the right candidate -- a majority, Gallup reports, that hasn't been seen with this question since 1996.

An Oct. 23 CNN and Opinion Research Corporation survey of 697 likely voters who were asked this same question from Sept. 19-21 found similarly. In that poll, which had a plus or minus sam-pling error of 3.5 percent, a reported 58 percent of respondents pointed to the economy as their number-one factor in choosing the next president.

So as Nov. 4 approaches, the question is who has the upper hand with this issue?

Certainly, the campaign of change that underscores Obama's race to the White House resonates; the signs of a crashing economy are not difficult to find.

Housing delinquencies and foreclosures rose during the second quarter of 2008, according to September summaries from the Mortgage Bankers Association.

The long-denied housing bubble has not only been acknowledged, but moreover admittedly bro-ken and burst. It was this

"massive speculative bubble in housing prices [that] caused millions of Americans to think of their homes as an investment, rather than a place to live," according to a joint AOL-Associated Press report last week. It's the fallout now that continues to fuel the financial trap facing many owners who can't find a buyer, but can't afford their monthly mort-gage and interest payments.

Putting money in Wall Street, never a guaranteed wealth builder, has nonetheless become about as sure-fire a savings strategy for the impatient, nervous or inexperienced investor as rolling dice in Las Vegas.

And on the heels of all this shaky housing and stock market news comes Thursday's re-lease of figures that are generally seen as a solid barometer of the soundness of the national economy -- the gross domestic product. The Commerce Department's third quarter GDP statistics basically show consumers have cut spending by the biggest level in 28 years, and the blunt White House admission from spokeswoman Dana Perino was that such cutbacks are in-dicative of the "rough ride" that's sure to come.

Recession, it's now whispered, is looming.

Prince William County is not immune. Cursory searches of Internet real estate sites that track foreclosures and bank-owned properties show thousands in the local market that fit this category. In response, community leaders now face the unenviable task of cutting the government and school budgets by more than $1 billion in the next five years to address the projected shortfalls from real estate tax revenues.

So it would seem only natural that a frustrated constituency would turn to the freshest face for answers. And until recently, polls did suggest Obama and the Democratic Party were the per-ceived solutions.

"The poll finds that by a slim 5 percentage point margin, people think the Democratic Party would do more to help their finances than the Republican Party would," read a Fox News survey from Oct. 15, at a time when most polls were showing Obama with an even wider lead.

But in the days that followed, numbers have tightened, with some polls now showing statistical dead heats between Obama and McCain. The Oct. 29 traditional model that Gallup used found the Obama-McCain race at 49 percent to 46 percent, respectively; Rasmussen on this same day reported Obama up 50 percent to 47 percent.

Perhaps the Oct. 15 final debate proved enlightening to the important undecided camp. That's when McCain pushed his opposition to elaborate on his comments to Joe Wurzel-bacher, a.k.a. Joe the Plumber, that "when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody," as Obama said on the campaign trail in Ohio.

At least some of the aftereffects -- the discussions of an Obama versus McCain economic plan and which would bode better for the nation's future financial health -- were pro-Republican.

"McCain has cut into Obama's advantage on the questions of whom voters trust to handle the economy and the financial crisis," one election article based on AP poll findings reported on Oct. 22, a week after the final debate.

"Nearly half of likely voters think their taxes will rise under an Obama administration, com-pared with a third who say McCain would raise their taxes."

Staff writer Cheryl Chumley can be reached at 703-670-1907.