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If the president can benefit, pollsters say Democrats and Republicans seeking re-election in tough contests might also profit from improving economic indicators. "It would help all incumbents because people are less angry," Warren said. The rise in confidence comes as the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller index showed that national home prices rose 1.2 percent in July compared with a year ago, increasing home equity and, by extension, the perception of personal wealth. "People pick up on that very quickly," said Rob Shapiro, an economist and former adviser to President Bill Clinton. "They're no longer getting poor every month. So people think,
'OK, we are on a better path, even if we're proceeding on it a lot more slowly than I expected or hoped.'" Significantly, prices are rising in many large cities in swing states such as Florida, Colorado, Michigan and North Carolina. Prices have risen 3.6 percent in Tampa, Fla., in the past year, for example. And they're up 5.4 percent in Denver, 6.2 percent in Detroit and 2.2 percent in Charlotte, N.C. Still, Obama is bucking trends. Unemployment stands at 8.1 percent, and no president has been re-elected with unemployment above 8 percent since the Great Depression. Despite improving public attitudes, an Associated Press-GfK poll this month found 52 percent of likely voters said the country was moving in the wrong direction. "Going from absolutely horrible to really, really bad is not exactly an endorsement of an incumbent president's record," Republican pollster Whit Ayres said. "We're a long way from measures that show the American people have confidence in the direction of the economy." Shapiro concedes that the politics are confounding. A Washington Post poll out Tuesday showed Obama leading Romney among likely voters in Ohio, 52 to 44 percent. The president also had a slight edge in Florida, 51 to 47 percent among those most likely to vote. "We have a president who is leading in a very convincing way despite economic numbers that suggest that he should either be losing or just hanging on, and he's not just hanging on," Shapiro said.
[Associated
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