Economy the issue for N.H. voters

But it is the slow-to-recover economy, more than the emerging primary race, that is uppermost in the minds of New Hampshire voters.

In the Globe poll, more likely voters (42 percent) said the economy was still in a downturn than said it had started to recover (23 percent).

This pessimism is especially striking in a state that has the third-lowest unemployment rate in the nation, but it reflects the fact that in the households of 35 percent of those polled at least one person had been unemployed in the past two years. Only 15 percent of those polled said they are better off financially than they were four years ago.

“Given that New Hampshire is in much better economic shape than almost any other state, it’s surprising that concern about economic issues is very high,’’ said Andrew E. Smith, the director of the university’s survey center.

Also striking are the remedies that poll respondents said they would prefer to deal with these problems — responses that run counter to the rollback of social program spending and tax cuts that most candidates in the emerging Republican field now advocate.

Despite the state’s antitax reputation, most poll respondents said they would prefer to reduce the deficit by raising taxes on the wealthy, rather than eliminating federal agencies or cutting spending on Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.

Even among likely Republican primary voters, only 39 percent supported cutting Medicaid, and fewer than 30 percent supported cutting Medicare and Social Security.

Those figures underscore the political downside of the sweeping changes in Medicaid and Medicare proposed by Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman, Smith said. The Republican-led House passed the Ryan plan.

“It’s not a politically popular process, and that points out the problem both parties are going to have, long term, in figuring out how to settle the debt,’’ he said. “There are a lot of very unpopular decisions that are going to have to be made.’’