Just over 50% of American voters view the US economy as being in rough shape, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll.

Yahoo Finance Senior Columnist Rick Newman joins the Live show to comment on what could be contributing to faltering economic confidence and whether it paints an accurate picture or not.

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live.

Editor's note: This article was written by Luke Carberry Mogan.

Video Transcript

- Despite the US economy showing more resilience than expected, a recent poll shows registered voters nationwide are striking a somber tone on the economy. Yahoo Finance's Rick Newman is here with the details. Rick.

RICK NEWMAN: Hey, guys. This was from a New York Times Siena College poll over the weekend. They asked the usual put Biden against Trump to see who comes out on top. But they also asked some other questions, you're seeing it there on the screen. 51% of people in this poll said the economy is in poor condition. 51%, that was the lowest answer you could give. There was nothing worse than poor.

So according to this poll, half of Americans think the economy is about as bad as it can be. And that's just completely ridiculous. I mean, we've talked so many times about inflation. We know inflation, really hurts working families, their paycheck doesn't go as far some people are falling behind. But this is really crazy and just to-- I just try to frame this by putting some other context here. So 61% of Americans as one example say they own stocks.

And we have been seeing records in the stock market day after day this year. And those people-- it's not necessarily making 61% of Americans rich. But people's retirement funds are going up. There's a wealth effect there. So 61% of Americans are getting wealthier just by doing nothing because their stock portfolio is going up. And yet 51% say the economy is in poor condition.

I find the same thing if you look at home ownership, for example. I mean, homeowners, if you're lucky enough to own a home. And that is a lot of Americans. Guess what? You either refinance your mortgage at around 3% which means your housing costs went down sharply or are you 40% of people own their home outright. And homes have been going up in value. So this data just doesn't square.

And I mean, we've been talking for a while, Americans seem more bummed out by a lot than the state of the economy warrants. And it just was bugging me again. So I decided to just look into what's going on here and it's puzzling.