Americans ' pessimism about the nation 's economic conditions , and skepticism that government can help solve that problem , delivered Democrats their midterm beating this cycle , a team of bipartisan pollsters found in a midterm postmortem survey . Democratic pollster Celinda Lake and Republican pollster Ed Goeas said those were the main takeaways from their final George Washington University Battleground Poll of the cycle , conducted Dec. 7-11 among 1,000 registered voters nationwide . And they said the survey has grave implications for the Democratic Party if they ca n't craft a cohesive , convincing message on the economy . `` Tell me who is ahead on the economy in 2016 and I 'll tell you who is going to be president , '' Lake said at a Christian Science Monitor event on Thursday . She noted that `` voters ' economic anxiety is deep-seated , and shows no signs of abating . '' The poll found that a vast majority of Americans , 77 percent , said they 're at least somewhat worried about the nation 's current economic conditions . And voters in the middle class are the most pessimistic about the economy , the pollsters found . That points to why , Lake and Goeas said , Democrats had so much trouble this cycle and ultimately lost control of the Senate to Republicans and gave the GOP their biggest majority in the House since the 1920s . Democrats aimed their midterm message at middle class voters , highlighting policies like a minimum wage hike and fair pay legislation that they said polled well with the middle class . But that strategy was too `` piecemeal , '' Lake wrote in her analysis of the poll , and `` struck voters as falling well short of the level of change necessary to set our country and our economy back on track . '' And Democrats had trouble selling the public government solutions for their problems because , the poll found , American voters are still split on whether government can solve them to begin with . `` Voters want government to intervene , but they fear what the government will do if it wades into the important task of ensuring the economic stability of voters , '' Goeas said . A slight majority , 52 percent , said the government should do more to solve problems and help meet the needs of people , while 48 percent said it should get out of the way and let the free market help people get ahead . Many in the party have diagnosed that very issue as one of the main reasons the party fared so poorly in the midterms .
A George Washington University Battleground Poll found Americans split on the role of government . The poll was conducted from June 27 to July 1 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. Whoever wins on the economy will win the White House in 2016 , Democratic pollster Celinda Lake said .