A political lifetime ago, Ronald Reagan’s pollster seized on this question to frame the campaign’s argument during his 1980 presidential campaign: “Is the country headed in the right direction, or is it on the wrong track?”

Voters overwhelmingly chose the latter, and Reagan cast the contest as a broad referendum on the United States’ course under President Jimmy Carter. He won big, and strategists have used “right direction, wrong track” as a campaign weather vane ever since.

This year, Republicans see the sour national mood as evidence that they will defeat Hillary Clinton and recapture the White House from Democratic control. But like many guideposts, the right direction, wrong track question doesn’t signal what it used to.

Responses from voters resemble the pessimism of 36 years ago. In the New York Times-CBS News poll for July, 26 percent of respondents said the nation was headed in the right direction, while 69 percent felt it was on the wrong track.