What Constitutes the 'Track'?

USA Today has an article about how a recent poll indicates that 75% of Americans do not believe the country is "on the right track." I can understand people thinking that the country is not on the right track for many reasons, some of which are cited in the article: the war in Iraq, President Bush, etc. I can even understand people thinking that the country is not on the right track due to the economy (not because it is actually bad but because, no matter how good it gets, multiple news outlets will persist in insisting that the economy is in the tank and a portion of their audience is just stupid (or uninformed) enough to believe it (witness the closing sentence of the article)).

I cannot, however, understand 5% of respondents saying that the country - the entire country - is not "on the right track" because of the price of gasoline.