Here's the remarkable thing about the headline above, that plays out in the data below. Half of you (the Democrats/liberals) responded with, "Ugh, what?!?" The other half (the Republicans/conservatives) with, "So what?" Polarized politics can be fun.

In the new Post / ABC News poll released on Tuesday, there's plenty of disagreement on a lot of things, but not much on one point: Americans overwhelmingly think that the economic system favors the wealthy. That's true of every economic group broken out in the survey: those with an income under $50,000 a year, those making over $100,000, and everyone in between.

You'll notice, though, that the wealthiest group is also the most likely to say that the system is fair. We're not going to explore that for two reasons: one, it's off-topic and, two, it doesn't require much exploration.

When you split the responses by income and party, you see that there's only one group that is more likely to call the economic system fair rather than unfair: the wealthier group of Republicans. (By contrast, Democrats in the higher income group are actually more likely to label the system unfair.)

There is a broad perception that Republicans and the rich share a set of priorities, policy and otherwise -- a perception that spans the decades. Which makes the results of the generic ballot in the new Post poll somewhat surprising: The same people who think the economic system favors the rich are more likely to support putting Republicans in charge of Congress.

Part of the reason for that is that voters don't vote on one issue alone. Republican voters see government dysfunction as the top issue according to a poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation, followed by the economy, foreign affairs, and Obamacare.

But even those who see the economy as a key issue don't agree on which party would do a better job of fixing the system.

A recent CNN/ORC poll asked people to identify which economic group was the focus of which political party. We took the CNN data and broke it down by party and income.



Democrats, regardless of income, see the Republican party as favoring the wealthy -- as do about half of Republicans. (Which explains the perception mentioned above.) But when it comes to Republican views of Democratic priorities, there's a split. Half of Republicans earning under $50,000 a year see the Democrats as favoring the rich. Half of those making over $50,000 think Democrats favor the poor. So by choosing Republicans over Democrats, those under-$50,000 Republicans see themselves as looking out for their own best interests -- particularly considering that 41 percent of them think Republicans put the middle class first.

The place to argue about the merits of these beliefs is below, in the comments. Up here in the article we'll simply note that the broad perception that the economy favors the rich almost certainly won't shift much regardless of who wins in the midterms.