Facing the Jobs Issue

Reagan makes his case, but G. O.P. candidates may have trouble making theirs

Now it gets serious. With less than two weeks to go before the mid-term election, the preliminary sparring is over, and the candidates are trading their heavy punches. The prize is a big one: preservation or destruction of the conservative coalition that has enabled President Ronald Reagan to put most of his programs through Congress.

As always in an election that is really an aggregation of state and local votes, the candidates are debating a thousand points of personality and parochial concerns. But on every husting, one national issue is dominating all others: the state of the recession-ridden economy, and especially the 10.1% unemployment rate. Democrats everywhere are seeking to pin the blame for double-digit unemployment squarely on Reagan. On national TV, the President last week took the issue headon, an action he had been avoiding. In a sober address from the Oval Office that was considerably more effective than his stump speeches on behalf of Republican candidates, Reagan attempted to assure the voters of his concern, argued that his policies are slowly bringing the nation out of an economic mess created mostly by his predecessors, and stressed his Administration's accomplishments in reducing inflation (now 5.1%, down from 12.4% in 1980).

Which side are the voters inclined to believe? The answer, so far as it can be deduced from a Yankelovich, Skelly & White poll for TIME, is that troubled voters are skeptical about accepting either view as gospel, but on balance the results are worrisome for Republicans. While most voters still absolve Reagan of responsibility for the nation's economic distress, they are not so indulgent toward his party.

The electorate is clearly worried. Almost 60% of the registered voters interviewed across the country judged the nation to be "in deep and serious trouble," vs. only 38% who thought the difficulties are no worse now than at other times. By 47% to 39%, they considered rising unemployment more troublesome than continued inflation. That is an almost exact reversal of a poll in June, when 46% worried more about inflation and only 38% about unemployment. *

But when asked where to place the blame for climbing jobless rates, 46% of those polled answered: "The situation Reagan inherited." Even 34% of the registered Democrats interviewed chose that response. Only 33% of the total put the responsibility on "Reagan and his policies." Some 61% said they personally were economically worse off than they had been when Reagan took office. Even so, 57% thought the President had generally put the nation on "the right track."

Moreover, Reagan seems to have weathered without serious damage the decisive psychological blow of the Government's announcement on Oct. 8 that the September jobless rate had really crossed the symbolic 10% mark. Although the Yankelovich interviews were conducted by telephone Oct. 5-7, the firm repolled last week and found that the opinions on Reagan and the economy had not significantly changed.