By Pamela Gentry, Senior Political Producer 

Posted April 10, 2008 – Are you better off today than you were four years ago?  Well, two recent polls found that, for the first time in 50 years of asking the question, the majority of Americans believe they are stuck in a rut or falling behind. 

The poll, conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, asked middle-class folks how things had been for them the last five years.  What it discovered is that one in four respondents believe they hadn’t moved forward, while about one in three believe they’ve actually taken steps backward.

Pew’s poll, released Wednesday, found that only 11 percent of the public sees the economy as “excellent” or “good,” down from February’s 17 percent and January’s 26 percent.

So who do the American people think can fix the problem and make them feel more economically secure?   Senator’s Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) both have a slight advantage over presumptive Republican nominee John McCain of Arizona.

As for the contest between the two Democrats, 49 percent of those surveyed prefer Obama over Clinton (39 percent), almost identical to the findings of a survey in April.  That’s good news for Obama, because it indicates that he has weathered the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy.  The poll found folks had a favorable response to how Obama handled the racially charged sermons of Wright, even among those who are Clinton and McCain supporters.

 As for likeability and electablity, Pew found that a large majority of White Democratic voters view Obama as “honest, inspiring, patriotic and down-to-earth.”  He beats Clinton in almost every personal attribute tested in the survey, except patriotism.

Roughly twice as many White Dems, 30 percent, said the word “phony” describes Clinton, compared with 16 percent who felt it describes Obama.  This gap, according to Pew, is the based on the larger perceptions of likeability; 43 percent of White Democratic voters say the phrase “hard-to-like” describes Clinton, while just 13 percent say it describes Obama.

Obama has lost some ground with Independent voters, who appear to be leaning toward McCain.  Another piece of good news for McCain in this poll is that he has picked up more support from within his party. 

Republicans in the survey seem ready to rally around their presidential pick.  Sixty-four percent say Republicans will unite behind the Arizona senator, compared with 58 percent of likely voters who answered the question in February.

The craziest findings in the poll, despite the flack with Wright, Obama’s former pastor, who headed Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, is that one in 10 people still think Obama is a Muslim, and this is  across party lines.  Ten percent of Dems, 8 percent of Independents and 14 percent of Republicans surveyed identified Obama as a Muslim; a third said they didn’t know his religion.