WASHINGTON (AP) - What's rising faster than gas prices this summer? Americans' worries about them.
The economy is the nation's top concern by far, but anxiety about energy has grown more since spring than any other issue while the focus on Iraq continues to fade, according to a poll released Wednesday.
The findings by the Associated Press-Ipsos poll provide the latest confirmation of how economic woes — including job losses, rising inflation and the ailing financial and housing markets — are dominating voters' worries as this fall's presidential election approaches.
Forty-four percent said the economy was the country's most important problem, a small increase from the 39 percent who said so in April.
Another 22 percent named energy problems including rising gasoline costs, an enormous boost from the 4 percent who said so last spring. Gasoline averaged about $3.33 per gallon in early April, about 70 cents less than it does now, according to the federal Energy Information Administration.
"It seems we're going downhill," said Catherine Warren, 64, a nurse from Aston, Pa., who said she may not be able to afford to retire next year. Citing patients who must pick which medicines to buy, she added, "Since when has America been like that?"
The Iraq war and other foreign affairs issues were named by just 15 percent in the poll. Iraq was cited by 25 percent in April and 40 percent in January, illustrating how rapidly the war has plummeted from its long-held perch as the No. 1 problem.
"People are facing what they think of as a more immediate crisis in their lives right now, which is an economy that they believe just isn't working right now," said Democratic pollster Geoffrey Garin.
Concerns about the economy, energy and Iraq were distributed about evenly across party lines and most regions of the country. Southerners and rural residents were likelier to cite energy worries than Westerners and city dwellers.
A recent AP-Yahoo News poll showed Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama trusted by more people than GOP hopeful John McCain to handle the economy and gas prices, while McCain had advantages on Iraq and terrorism.
"People are really trying to figure out how they restructure their whole family budget in a pretty significant way," Republican pollster David Winston said of the economy. "This isn't some abstraction they're dealing with. This is pretty front and center."
The AP-Ipsos poll was conducted from July 10-14, and used telephone interviews to ask 500 people to name the country's top problem. It had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.
AP Director of Surveys Trevor Tompson contributed to this report.
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