WaPo Detroit poll provides plenty of insight into metro area attitudes

Over the weekend, the Washington Post published a series of stories all stemming from a wide-ranging November poll of about 1,200 metro Detroit residents. The survey — focusing mostly on the equally wide-ranging fallout over the area’s sour economy – yields what the Post headline writer described as “grim conditions but optimistic outlooks.”

The second half of that equation is encouraging especially as the area’s battered self-image has suffered in recent years. One of the stories focuses on attitudes of younger metro Detroiters, and includes a particularly interesting yin-yang split. First the yin:

The weight of Detroit’s economic downturn is particularly heavy on the area’s young adults, with those under 30 suffering job losses, cuts in pay or hours and difficulties trying to find new jobs in greater numbers than their elders. More than four in 10 area residents aged 18 to 29 say they plan to seek their fortunes elsewhere, according to the new Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation-Harvard University Detroit poll.

Now, the yang:

Despite these concerns, younger Detroiters are an optimistic group, especially when it comes to their own lives. Nearly all expect their personal standard of living to rise over the next decade, and nearly six in 10 say the best years for America’s workers are yet to come… More than three-quarters of young adults say they think the auto industry will recover, but nearly a third say the region’s economy can recover even if this doesn’t happen.

The biggest take away from the series is how Detroit’s current economic malaise may be a harbinger of things to come nationally. The Washington Post certainly isn’t the first outlet to venture into that kind of speculation, but it’s still eye-catching — and chilling — when I come across it. Here’s just a taste:

The long struggle here has significance beyond Detroit — the state has been battered by lost tax revenue, a weakened economy and the highest statewide jobless rate — resonating throughout the nation. “The plight of these people is also in a way our plight,” said Clyde Prestowitz, president of the Economic Strategy Institute, a Washington-based public policy group that studies globalization and its impact. If one part of the country loses the jobs that support it, he said, the rest of the country pays.

“Michigan is the harbinger,” Prestowitz said. “Some think that it is just the auto industry, but the same dynamics that have undercut the auto and manufacturing industries of Michigan are also undercutting the high-tech labs in Silicon Valley and they’re also undercutting medical services in Pittsburgh.”

Last but not least, the poll fleshes out some interesting differences of opinion along racial lines regarding the effectiveness of government. According to this snapshot in time, African Americans have a lot more faith in the feds than whites, yet whites in the suburbs are apparently less critical of their local governments than Detroit’s majority African-American population. Both groups, however, find common ground in shared negative attitudes toward Lansing’s ability to make a difference for the better.