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Energy Anxiety Growing, Poll Finds

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The Associated Press

Published: July 24, 2008

WASHINGTON - What's rising faster than gas prices this summer? Americans' worries about them.

The economy is the nation's top concern by far, but anxiety about energy has grown more since spring than any other issue while the focus on Iraq continues to fade, according to a poll released Wednesday.

The findings by the Associated Press-Ipsos poll provide the latest confirmation of how economic woes - including job losses, rising inflation, and the ailing financial and housing markets - are dominating voters' worries as the presidential election approaches.

Forty-four percent said the economy is the country's most important problem, a small increase from the 39 percent who said so in April.

Another 22 percent named energy problems including rising gasoline costs, a big jump from the 4 percent who said so in the spring. Gasoline averaged about $3.33 per gallon in early April, about 70 cents less than it does now, according to the federal Energy Information Administration.

"It seems we're going downhill," said Catherine Warren, 64, a nurse in Aston, Pa., who said she may not be able to afford to retire next year. Citing patients who must pick which medicines to buy, she added, "Since when has America been like that?"

"People are facing what they think of as a more immediate crisis in their lives right now, which is an economy that they believe just isn't working right now," said Democratic pollster Geoffrey Garin.

Concerns about the economy, energy and Iraq were distributed just about evenly across party lines and most regions. Southerners and rural residents were likelier to cite energy worries than Westerners and city dwellers.

"People are really trying to figure out how they restructure their whole family budget in a pretty significant way," Republican pollster David Winston said of the economy. "This isn't some abstraction they're dealing with. This is pretty front and center."

The AP-Ipsos poll was conducted by telephone July 10-14, and asked 500 people to name the country's top problem. It had a sampling error margin of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.

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