December 20, 2004
Report & Analysis · Other Poll Releases
ATHENS, GA – The latest Peach State Poll finds attitudes in the general public about the economy and life in Georgia are consistent with a public that generally supported the status quo in the November elections. Georgians are generally content with the direction of the state, and they are as likely to express optimism about the economy as not to. Republicans and Democrats in the general public still hold very different views on the economy.
The Peach State Poll is a quarterly survey of public opinion conducted by the University of Georgia’s Carl Vinson Institute of Government.
Forty-nine percent of Republicans rated the economy as either excellent (9 percent) or good (40 percent) in the October Peach State Poll; by contrast, only 26 percent of Democrats rated the economy as excellent (1 percent) or good (25 percent). Republicans were also far more likely to believe that the economy is improving than are Democrats; 64 percent of Republicans say the economy is getting better while only 20 percent of Democrats share this view.
Other Peach State Poll results:
* Sixty-three percent of Georgians say that they are satisfied with the way things are going in Georgia. Although Republicans (80 percent) are more likely than Democrats to express satisfaction, still a majority of Democrats (51 percent) say that they are satisfied.
* Men are more likely to express satisfaction with the current state of the state than are women by 9 percentage points, and whites are more likely to express satisfaction than are blacks by 18 percentage points. These differences evaporate, however, when we control for party differences.
* Going into the November 2004 election, Georgia Republicans cited national security as the most important problem facing the country (47 percent) and education as the most important problem facing the state. Georgia Democrats cited the economy (36 percent) as the most important problem facing both the country (36 percent) and the state (33 percent).
* Georgians are more satisfied with the political direction of their state than are Americans with the country; 53 percent of Georgians say their state is heading in the right direction as compared with 41 percent of Americans who say the country is heading in the right direction.
These data were taken from a Peach State Poll survey conducted between October 15 and October 23, 2004. The poll included 807 telephone interviews of randomly selected adults in Georgia. For a sample of this size, the margin of error at the 95 percent confidence level is +/-3.5 percent.
