Roughly one-third of registered voters in Wisconsin expect the economy to get worse in the next year, according to the latest Marquette University Law School poll.
The poll has regularly asked respondents whether they expect the economy to get better, worse or stay about the same in the next year since it started in 2012. The 34 percent of registered voters who said they expect things to get worse in the poll released last week was the highest in the poll’s history.
In the final poll before the November election, 26 percent of registered voters said they expect the economy to get worse, compared to 38 percent expecting it to get better and 28 percent who said stay the same.
In the most recent poll, 29 percent said they are expecting the economy to get better and 30 percent said it would stay the same.
More than half of Democrats and Democratic leaning independents are expecting the economy to get worse, compared to just 15 percent of Republicans and GOP leaning independents. The biggest shift came from respondents who said they are truly independent. In October, 23 percent of them said they expect the economy to get worse, compared to 43 percent in the most recent poll.
Younger respondents were more likely to say they expect the economy to get worse. Among those 18 to 29 years old, 42 percent are expecting things to get worse, compared to 29 percent in October. In the 30- to 44-year-old group, 45 percent expect things to get worse, up from 28 percent in October.
Around 30 percent of the other age groups, 45- to 59-year-olds and those over 60, are expecting things to get worse. Both categories saw single-digit increases from October.
The pessimism was fairly evenly distributed across income groups. Thirty-five percent of those with family incomes of less than $40,000 per year expect things to get worse, compared to 33 percent of those making $40,000 to $75,000 and 39 percent of those making more than $75,000.
The major shifts came from the lower income group, up 10 percentage points from October, and the higher income group, up 23 percent from October.
Read more economic data reports from the BizTracker page.
