Americans cite economy, dissatisfaction with government as top concerns: poll

With the U.S. presidential election looming, Americans continue to cite economy and dissatisfaction with the government as top issues facing the country, found a latest Gallup poll.

The Oct. 5-9 poll showed that 17 percent of Americans cite the economy as the most important U.S. problem. This marks the lowest level of concern about economic issues in October of presidential election years since 2000, when 21 percent of Americans mentioned economic issue as the top problem.

Meanwhile, 12 percent of Americans name dissatisfaction with the government as the country's top issue, followed by race relations and racism (10 percent).

Despite all the publicity and daily media reporting of this year's divisive presidential race, only 7 percent Americans name elections/election reform as the most important issue, the same with the issues of immigration/illegal aliens and national security.

Still, that is higher than Gallup has found at this stage of the past presidential election years from 2000 to 2012, when no more than 1 percent of Americans mentioned the election as the country's top concern.

The other issues on the list of top American issues included unemployment/jobs (6 percent), terrorism (5 percent), federal budget deficit/federal debt (4 percent), poor healthcare/high cost of healthcare (4 percent), ethics/moral/religious decline (3 percent), crime/violence (3 percent), and environment/pollution (3 percent).

Though Americans list economy as the most important problem, the focus of the recent presidential campaigning has been on the candidates' personal scandals, including the sexual harassment charges against Republican candidate Donald Trump and Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton's email scandals. Endit