On a new Data for Progress survey's question asking "Of the following, what would you say are the biggest reasons why you think the economy is not getting better for people like you?" in most respondents cited the usual stuff like "Price of groceries," "Price of goods and services other than gas and groceries, generally," "Price of energy and utility bills," and "Price of gas" as the most common reasons on the field where they were allowed to select up to three choices.

At the bottom of the list however, just under "Your upward mobility at work," is "Gambling losses," a fairly novel and let's say interesting reason for a respondent to cite as why the economy isn't working out for people like them, with 1 percent having picked it. In all likelihood this was just a single respondent being rounded up to 1 percent of a subsample from those who had answered "I do not think the economy is getting better for people like me" on the prior question as the crosstab shows this gambling problem at 1 percent of independents, males, and Latinos – and 0 percent among mutually exclusive demographics like females, Democrats, or Republicans.

So maybe this asshole was trolling. It's still pretty goddamned funny Data for Progress even asked it, as if anyone who bet on the Saints to cover the spread against the Bucs last week could reasonably blame it on "the economy." They might as well be asking some 28 year-old basement dwelling anime fan to list the reasons why he thinks the local dating scene isn't working out for him these days.

In what maybe could've been the lede here, on the survey's first question of whether "the economy is getting better for people like me," 29 percent of the likely voter respondents said yes and 65 percent said no, a marginal improvement over the yes 24, no 70 finding from September. All of that gain was driven by Dem respondents as indie voters stayed static at 22 yes, 71 no while among Republicans it actually decreased slightly from 12 to 11 percent yes over a stretch in which, by almost every conceivable measure, the economy grew. Probably a safe bet that it'll drop to low single digits among MAGA voters if the Dow Jones hits 40,000 in the next few months.