• Obama wins by landslide in 7-Eleven coffee cup survey

    Courtesy 7-Eleven

    Blue cups are more popular than red cups by a 60-40 margin.

    By Ben Popken, TODAY contributor

    To figure out whether President Barack Obama will win re-election, don't bother consulting costly scientific polls. Just check out the self-serve coffee at your local 7-Eleven convenience store.

    As it has done in every presidential election since 2000, the convenience store chain is selling red and blue to-go coffee cups marked with the names of the major party candidates, as well as regular, unmarked cups for undecided voter in its "7-Election."

    So far Obama is ahead nationally by a wide 60-40 margin, although more scientific polls have the national race as virtually a dead heat. In the closely contested swing state of Ohio, where both candidates are campaigning heavily this week, the coffee cup poll favors the incumbent 57 to 43, with undecided coffee drinkers excluded.

    Even though the poll bills itself as "unabashedly unofficial and unscientific," it has accurately predicted the winners since it began in 2000. Not only that, the results have hewed within 1 percentage point of the final popular vote. In 2008, Sen. John McCain got 46 percent in the 7-Election and 45.7 percent in the real election, while Obama got 52 percent of the coffee cups and 52.9 percent of the actual votes. In 2004, President George W. Bush beat Sen. John Kerry in the 7-Election 51-49, compared with 50.7 to 48.3 in the real polls.


    Likewise the chain's coffee cup sales had Bush beating Vice President Al Gore in 2000 by a percentage point, while U.S. voters put Gore ahead by 0.5 percentage point in the popular vote. Still, the 7-Election did better than many major media outlets, accurately calling the race for Bush, who ultimately won by Supreme Court decision.

    Other cheeky polls also point to a second term for Obama. "Chia Obama," for example, is outselling its Romney Chia planter counterpart, and Obama Halloween masks are also outselling their Republican counterparts.

    One reason for the 7-Eleven poll's accuracy could be its large sample set in the millions, compared with 1,000 to 2,000 adults in typical scientific polls. The 7-Election surveys have held up even though customers are allowed to "stuff the ballot box." Each cup purchase, even from the same customer, counts as a vote.

    During the chain's Sept. 28 free coffee day, New York looked like a shoo-in for Obama, at least from the 42nd Street location in New York City's Times Square. "It was crazy," 23-year-old cashier Brian Moravec told NBC News. "I had a table stacked with all the cups and nine out of ten people went for the Obama cup." As for the Romney one, people were saying, "Don't even give me that cup," the cashier said.

    So which cup does Moravec take? "The courtesy cup. I don't even have time to get into politics," he said with a laugh as he moved to ring up a lottery ticket for another customer.

    Those political junkies who do have time to track the voting can rack the results at 7-Election.com for both national and state-by-state results.

    Neither campaign's press offices responded to a request by NBC News for comment.

    More money news:

     

  • Voters let wallets guide them come November

    By Eve Tahmincioglu

    This year’s presidential election may hinge on voters’ wallets.

    More than half of Americans say their own financial well-being is the most important factor, or among the most important factors, when it comes to deciding who’ll they’ll pull the lever for come November, according to a study released Monday by Bankrate.com.

    “How Americans feel about the U.S. economy and their own finances will be central to the election on Nov. 6,” said Claes Bell, senior banking expert with Bankrate.com. “While unemployment will probably be above that 7.2 percent historical benchmark when the election takes place, the key question will be whether Americans are comfortable with the progress that has been made since the economy took a turn for the worse.”

    The telephone survey, that polled 1,000 adults earlier this month, also found voters were “deeply divided about which candidate will help households get back on track financially.” 

    • 21 percent said their personal financial situations would be better under former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney
    • 21 percent said they would be better under President Barack Obama 
    • And 8 percent were undecided.

    But a majority, 50 percent, said whoever wins come November probably wouldn’t make much of a difference when it came to their wallets.

     

     

  • Unemployment is the problem, but Americans see no clear solution

    Pew Research Center

    By Allison Linn, NBC News

     

    We know Americans want Washington to do something about the nation’s unemployment crisis.

    But while it’s easy to identify the problem, the public is deeply divided on what actions the government should take to try to get millions of people back to work.

    President Barack Obama is scheduled to speak to a rare joint session of Congress Thursday to lay out his latest plan for lowering the nation’s 9.1 percent unemployment rate and boosting an economy that is barely growing. His exact plan has not been revealed but it is expected to include a combination of increased spending on infrastructure, extended tax cuts for workers and extended unemployment benefits.

    But a new poll from Pew Research Center and The Washington Post suggests that none of the ideas is a guranteed clear winner in the eyes of the public.

    For example, 36 percent of Americans think additional infrastructure spending would do a lot to help the nation’s job situation, while 21 percent think an infrastructure plan wouldn’t do anything at all.

    When it comes to cutting taxes on businesses, as many leading Republicans suggest, there’s a similar pattern: 31 percent say it would do a lot to create jobs, while 27 percent think it wouldn’t do anything at all.

    It's the same story when people were asked whether budget cuts designed to reduce the deficit would help improve the nation's job situation. 

     Obama and his would-be Republican challengers, who held a nationally televised debate Wednesday, are turning their focus to jobs after a summer in which Washington was preoccupied by a battle over cutting the federal budget deficit.

    But all along, it appears more Americans have been fretting about the job market than the deficit issues.

    More than four in 10 Americans said the job situation is the economic problem that worries them the most, according to Pew, while only 2 in 10 said it was the federal budget deficit.

    The percentage of people citing job worries has swelled in recent months, as the job market has remained tight and hiring has seemed to slow.

    Last month the economy created no jobs, according to a government report issued Friday. That leaves at least 14 million Americans looking for work.

    Related:

    It’s the economy, not the debt, stupid

    Obama plan may not be enough to fix jobs market

    Job insecurity is a rising fear among the employed

     

  • But will it be a 'Slurpee Summit'?

    AFP - Getty Images

    President Barack Obama has called for a summit of Democratic and Republican congressional leaders on Nov. 18 and if 7-Eleven has its way, it'll be a "Slurpee Summit."

    USA Today said Thursday that hours after Obama joked during a post-election news conference Wednesday that he would hold a Slurpee summit with the GOP leadership, 7-Eleven went into high gear and contacted White House officials to push for a meeting catered with the semi-frozen soft drinks.

    "This is a rare opportunity for a brand," Margaret Chabris, a spokeswoman for 7-Eleven, which owns 44-year-old Slurpee, told USA Today. "We don't want to be opportunistic, but nothing has ever been this big for Slurpee."

    The newspaper said that during recent campaign speeches, Obama quipped that GOP leaders were hanging around drinking Slurpees while the Democrats did the heavy lifting to fix the economy.

    Now the timing may have nothing to do with the whole Slurpee summit rigmarole, but Obama on Thursday invited the incoming House speaker, John Boehner, top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell, current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to the White House later this month to discuss the economy, tax cuts and unemployment insurance.

    In its pitch for a Slurpee summit, 7-Eleven even offered to create a purple Slurpee because that's what happens when you combine red and blue.

    Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

  • President Obama, boss in chief

    President ObamaPresident Barack Obama may be taking heat because of the weak economy and high unemployment rate, but that doesn't mean people wouldn't want to work for him.

    Thirty-five percent of people surveyed for staffing firm Adecco would like to have Obama as their boss, according to a telephone poll of 700 employees and 300 bosses released Monday.

    The survey asked participants to choose their favorite three potential bosses from a list of celebrity leaders. The only person to get more votes than Obama was Oprah Winfrey, chosen by 37 percent of participants.

    Republican celebrities did not fare as well: Only 19 percent said they would like to work for former President George W. Bush, while former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was chosen by 15 percent.

    The potential bosses to receive the lowest percentage of votes? Former BP CEO Tony Hayward and former "American Idol" judge Simon Cowell

    Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, also didn't fare well with only 9 percent choosing him.

    Most people also seem to recognize that being the boss is hard work. Adecco also found that while 37 percent of people think they are smarter than their boss, most - 70 percent - don't aspire to have his or her job.

    Also, although 61 percent of people surveyed consider their boss to be their friend, that doesn't mean they are "friending" them on Facebook. Only 18 percent of respondents said they connect with their boss on sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

    The survey was released ahead of National Boss Day, which is Friday.

  • Maybe America doesn't need all that stuff

    Americans don’t need all the stuff we buy. Maybe our economy is better off without some of it too.

    We need shoes for our kids and food for our dinner tables, sure. There’s also a whole swath of other stuff – ranging from Silly Bandz to designer sweat pants - that we buy just because we like it, or at least we like the feeling of purchasing it.

    For many years now, conventional wisdom has been that while we may not need all this stuff, our economy does. Consumer spending accounts for about 70 percent of gross domestic product, and millions of Americans are employed in retail and related occupations. One big reason we’ve been in the economic doldrums so long is that high unemployment, the credit crunch and the weak housing market have left many Americans without the funds to indulge in retail therapy.

    But is that reliance on consumption a help, or a hindrance? Annie Leonard, in The Story of Stuff, makes a compelling argument about the costs of American consumption to the environment and other areas. And now Chris Meyer and Julia Kirby, writing in the Harvard Business Review blog, question whether our strong reliance on consumption is bad economic policy too.

    Meyer and Kirby note that President Obama’s proposal to spend $200 billion on transportation infrastructure and tax credits for businesses could create some jobs and perhaps even get rid of some potholes.

    But on a larger scale, they argue that it could also help build a long-term economic model that is less reliant on the more fickle nature of Americans’ spending habits.

    The authors also offer this chilling set of statistics. In France and Germany, consumer spending makes up 57 percent of GDP. In China it is only 35 percent.

    The country that most closely resembles the United States? Greece, at 71 percent.

  • How proposed changes to Bush-era tax cuts would affect you

    If there’s one thing politicians excel at, it’s bickering, and the hot topic this week has been what to do about Bush-era tax cuts.

    President Obama wants to permanently extend the tax cuts for middle-class families while allowing them to expire for individuals making more than $200,000 and households making more than $250,000.

    Obama is trading barbs with Rep. John Boehner of Ohio, the top House Republican, who wants a two-year freeze on all tax rates, retaining the Bush-era tax cuts.

    Of course, both sides argue that their plan is the best for the ailing U.S. economy, but what about your own economy?

    The Tax Policy Center has come up with a handy calculator that allows you to see how your taxes would be affected based on three possible scenarios: going with Obama’s plan, keeping things the way they are or allowing the tax cuts to expire.

    The tool allows you to select for age, income level, marriage status and children. For example, a married couple with two young children and an income of about $75,000 would pay $1,653 in federal income tax under current law, $1,008 under Obama's proposal and $4,290 if the tax cuts are allowed to expire.

    Take a deeper dive into the calculator and you can customize based on everything from childcare expenses to charitable contributions. Or if you don’t feel like inputting all that data, the Tax Policy Center will give you sample figures based on the average amounts people in roughly the same income bracket reported on their tax returns.

    Roberton Williams, senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center, said the tool was designed to answer the question on many people’s minds: “What’s going to happen to me next year?”

    (He also conceded that it was a good place to send reporters who keep calling and asking the center to run these types of calculations for them.)

    The Tax Policy Center, a project of the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution, also has done extensive research on the larger economic effect any tax policy changes related to the Bush tax cuts. Wonky readers who want to know more than they ever thought possible about the implications of the tax cuts on both taxpayers and the government, this link is for you.

  • What's the best economic stimulus plan - and would it help you?

    Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

    President Obama made a major speech in Cleveland Wednesday to promote his plans for getting the economy back on track and putting Americans back to work. The Associated Press reports that Obama’s plans call for about $50 billion in infrastructure spending, a permanent extension of research and development tax credits for businesses, plus tax breaks for spending on plants and equipment through next year.

    The president may be getting the most publicity, but he’s far from the only one with big ideas for solving the nation’s major economic woes.

    A number of economists have their own theories, and we’re guessing many readers also have some ideas for what the government could do improve the economy (but more on that in a minute).

    Michael Mandel of Visible Economy thinks the government needs to do more to stimulate the kind of innovation-driven growth we saw in the 1990s, in the heyday of the technology boom.

    Robert Pollin at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst thinks that the government should help make it easier – and cheaper – for small businesses to get credit. That’s been tougher since the credit crunch that began in the fall of 2008. (President Obama also is still hoping to get the Senate to pass a bill that would give tax breaks to small businesses and make it easier for them to get loans.)

    James Galbraith at the University of Texas at Austin has a number of pretty radical proposals, including temporarily allowing people to collect full Social Security earlier and offering Medicare benefits at a younger age.

    Mark Weisbrot of the liberal-leaning Center for Economic and Policy Research argues that stimulus - and lots of it – is needed to counter the unemployment problem, which he believes is a much greater threat to the economy than the deficit.

    Commentators at the libertarian CATO Institute argue that perhaps the best prescription for the ailing economy is no stimulus at all. Daniel J. Mitchell writes: “The best that can be said about the new White House proposals is that they’re probably not as poorly designed as previous stimulus schemes.”

    Do you think any of the stimulus proposals out there – including Obama’s – would improve your economic situation? What do you think should be done to get the economy back on track? Join the discussion below.