Mind the gap (between the real world and the hot house of MSM/Academia/Washington D.C.)

Gallup has been tracking what the public considers to be The Most Important Problem for some decades, at least since the 1980's if I recall correctly.

There are some methodological criticisms that can be made, and certainly there is a framing issue. Still, it is longitudinal data which is interesting for comparison purposes.

Usually, and certainly most of this millennium (i.e. since 2000), the overriding single largest concern has always been the economy.

How times have changed. Before Trump, back to 2000, Economic Issues was usually the single largest concern for some 40% of the population.

Second (between 20-30%) and third place (between 10-15%), are usually any of Quality of government, Terrorism, Immigration, Crime, Race, Healthcare, or Health Insurance.

First - Third place issues usually aggregate to about 60-70%.

Fourth tier concerns typically garner 1-6% and tend to be very noisy over the years. I think Race relations for some brief period, perhaps after Ferguson, rode to 15% for a few months but is usually around 5%. Similarly with War. Environment occasionally bounces to 10% but is usually down around 4%. Same with climate change. Gun control is usually down around 2-4%.

Doing a comparison of what editors think are important issues (as measured in column inches) and what the public thinks are big problems is always bracing.

Among the most popular mainstream media biggest problems one might include

Climate change
Race
Gun Control
Income Inequality
Poverty
Election reform (secure voting, Voter ID, Electoral College, etc.)
School Shootings

as determined by the column inches written by the smart kids with journalism degrees.

For everyone else, none of these really register as an important issue.

Race - 5%
Poverty - 4%
Climate change - 3%
Gun Control - 2%
Income Inequality - 2%
Election reform - 1%
School Shootings - 0%

Not to say that these issues aren't important. But they are not existential threats which is how they are usually represented by the mainstream media. It is useful to regard the items which the mainstream media choose to report not as news but as advertising by advocacy groups.

The mainstream media, academia, the inside-the beltway denizens live in an entirely different world from everyone else. They have the megaphone but what they are shouting about is largely irrelevant to most citizens.