One of the highlights of the convention was the release of the latest installment in the American Dream Project: our ongoing series of opinion surveys monitoring how Americans feel about their chances to achieve the American Dream.
The previous two American Dream Surveys focused on the opinions of working people, factoring out managers, CEOs and the like. For this one, though, we opened up the survey to a broader audience -- all registered voters -- to get a sense for what the electorate in general feels about the current state of the American Dream.
What we found is that the anxieties that working people have about the future of the American Dream are not theirs alone:
- 61% of voters surveyed said that the economy was "pretty seriously off on the wrong track"
- 70% of voters surveyed said that the American Dream was getting harder to reach
- When we asked why it was getting harder to reach, the most popular answer -- rated 10 on a scale from 0 to 10 by more than half of respondents -- was "Corporations have gained too much power in the political system and that has hurt working people".
So if these are the problems, how can we fix them? The responses make clear that, by large majorities, voters see unions as part of the solution.
Respondents identified four elements as key to their conception of the American Dream:
- having a job that pays enough to support a family;
- having affordable quality health care;
- being able to ensure your children have the opportunity to succeed; and
- having a secure and dignified retirement.
On all four of these core issues, more than 90% of respondents said that having a union would help them do better. To take one example, when asked if having a union would help them achieve the American Dream goal of "having affordable quality health care", 94% said that it would help -- with 67% going so far as to say it would "definitely" help.
If you want more information about the survey, including the raw data, here's some links:
- Survey results summary memo (PDF)
- Survey results topline (raw data) (PDF)
- Remarks by CtW Chair Anna Burger on survey results (Microsoft Word)
