Gallup is out with a poll that essentially shows that the Change thing Barack Obama promised hasn't worked out. And Hope appears to have caught a train for the coast.

The survey, focused on swing states, says that a solid majority of registered voters don't think they're better off now than they were four years ago. 56% of the registered voters Gallup interviewed in swing states said they are not better off now than they were four years ago; only 40% said they are better off. So much for Change.

Equally damning for the O-Team, most of them don't believe they'll be better off four years from now if Obama wins in November.  52% predicted they would not be better off four years from now if Obama wins. Only 42% said they were likely to be in better shape. Sayonara, Hope.

Mitt Romney fared slightly better, with 44% predicting they will be in better shape in four years if Romney wins.

But this particular poll was conducted August 6-13, and, as Gallup noted, most of the interviews were conducted before Mitt Romney named Paul Ryan as his Veep choice.

Gallup's national tracking, conducted primarily after the Ryan announcement, shows much better numbers for Romney, with 46% of registered voters saying they would expect to be better off in four years under Romney-Ryan, and only 47% disagreeing.

The national numbers for Obama are even worse than the swing states results: 54% of registered voters say they will not be in better shape in four years if Obama wins, and only 40% say they'd expect to be doing better.

Given that Barack Obama is the known quantity in this year's election, the telling 'Are you better off now than four years ago' numbers should be very troubling for gang HQ holed up back in Chicago. Obama's Change didn't work; his Hope is hitching a ride with someone else. No wonder he wants to talk about Romney's taxes.