Polls: Economy 1st issue to Voters in Midterms
Newslooks- BBC- CNN
Democrats confront their nightmare scenario on election eve as economic concerns overshadow abortion and democracy worries. Americans will vote tomorrow in congressional elections with one big issue on their minds – the economy, and that’s good news for one party, The Republican. Democrats close their midterm election campaign Monday facing the nightmare scenario they always feared – with Republicans staging a gleeful referendum on Joe Biden’s struggling presidency and failure to tame inflation.
Hopes that Democrats could use the Supreme Court’s overturning of the right to an abortion and a flurry of legislative wins to stave off the classic midterm election rout of a party in power are now a memory. Biden faces a dark political environment because of the 40-year-high in the cost of living – and his hopes of a swift rebound next year are clouded by growing fears of a recession.
On the eve of the election, Democrats risk losing control of the House of Representatives and Republicans are increasingly hopeful of a Senate majority that would leave Biden under siege as he begins his reelection bid and with ex-President Donald Trump apparently set to announce his own campaign for a White House return within days.
It’s too early for postmortems. Forty million Americans have already voted. And the uncertainty baked into modern polling means no one can be sure a red wave is coming. Democrats could still cling onto the Senate even if the House falls.
But the way each side is talking on election eve, and the swathe of blue territory – from New York to Washington state – that Democrats are defending offer a clear picture of GOP momentum.
A nation split down the middle politically, which is united only by a sense of dissatisfaction with its trajectory, is getting into a habit of repeatedly using elections to punish the party with the most power. That means Democrats are most exposed this time.
If the president’s party takes a drubbing, there will be much Democratic finger-pointing over Biden’s messaging strategy on inflation – a pernicious force that has punched holes in millions of family budgets.
Just as in last year’s losing off-year gubernatorial race in Virginia, which the president won by 10 points in 2020, Democrats are closing the campaign warning about democracy and Trump’s influence while Republicans believe they are addressing the issue voters care about most.
“Here’s where the Democrats are: they’re inflation deniers, they are crime deniers, they’re education deniers,” Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.
Hilary Rosen, a longtime Democratic consultant, said on the same show that her party had misjudged the mood of the electorate.
“I’m a loyal Democrat, but I am not happy. I just think that we are – we did not listen to voters in this election. And I think we’re going to have a bad night,” Rosen told CNN’s Dana Bash.
“And this conversation is not going to have much impact on Tuesday, but I hope it has an impact going forward, because when voters tell you over and over and over again that they care mostly about the economy, listen to them. Stop talking about democracy being at stake.”
Rosen is not the only key figure on the left uneasy with the midterm strategy. Former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont, urged the White House to do more to stress economic concerns in recent weeks even while acknowledging the crisis of democracy and the importance of abortion rights. In retrospect, it appears Democrats were slow to recognize that a favorable period over the summer, spurred by falling gasoline prices and a hot streak for the president in passing legislation, wouldn’t last long enough to compensate for a ruinous political environment caused by the economy.
The impossibility of the political environment for Democrats was laid bare in a CNN/SSRS poll released last week. Some 51% of likely voters said the economy was the key issue in determining their vote. Only 15% named abortion – a finding that explains how the election battleground has tilted toward the GOP. Among voters for whom the economy is their top concern, 71% plan to vote Republican in their House district. And 75% of voters think the economy is already in a recession, meaning that Biden’s efforts to stress undeniably strong economic areas – including the strikingly low unemployment rate – are likely to fall on deaf ears.
How Biden spoke about the economy
It’s too simple to say that Biden has ignored the impact of inflation, or doesn’t understand the pain it’s bringing to the country.
The premise of his domestic presidency and his entire political career has been based on restoring the balance of the economy and restoring a measure of security to working and middle class Americans. His legislative successes could bring down the cost of health care for seniors and create a diversified green economy that shields Americans from future high energy prices amid global turmoil. But the benefits from such measures will take years to arrive. And millions of voters are hurting now and haven’t heard a viable plan from the president to quickly ease prices in the short-term.
There is no guarantee that plans by Republicans to extend Trump-era tax cuts and mandate new energy drilling would have much impact on the inflation crisis either. And divided government would likely mean a stalemate between two dueling economic visions. But the election has turned into a vehicle for voters to stress their frustration, with no imminent hope that things will get better soon.
Biden has resorted to highlighting bright spots of the economy – claiming to have reignited manufacturing, high job creation and a robust effort to compete with China. He’s now warning that Republicans would gut Social Security and Medicare on which many Americans rely in retirement.
And in practice, there is not much a president can do to quickly lower inflation on their own. The Federal Reserve is in the lead and the central bank’s strategy of rising interest rates could trigger a recession that could further haunt Biden’s presidency.
Inflation and high gas prices are also a global issue and have been worsened by factors beyond Biden’s control, including the war in Ukraine and supply chain issues brought on by the pandemic. At the same time, however, economists are debating the wisdom of Biden’s high-spending bills that sent billions of dollars into an overheating economy. And the White House’s repeated downplaying of the soaring cost of living as “transitory” badly misjudged the situation and was another thing that battered Biden’s credibility – on top of the confidence some voters lost in him during the US withdrawal from Afghanistan last year.
The Republican Party also got exactly what it wanted as Trump has delayed his expected campaign announcement until after the midterms, depriving Biden of the opportunity to shape this election as a direct clash with an insurrectionist predecessor whom he beat in 2020 and who remains broadly unpopular. Such a confrontation might have enabled the president to dampen the impact of his own low approval ratings and win over voters who still disdain the twice-impeached former president.
Ironically, Biden’s struggles in framing a believable economic message could bring about the very crisis of democracy that he is warning about.
Any incoming GOP majority would be dominated by pro-Trump radicals. Prospective committee chairs have already signaled they will do their best to deflect from Trump’s culpability on the January 6, 2021, insurrection and go after the Justice Department as it presses on with several criminal investigations into the ex-President’s conduct. And Tuesday’s election could usher in scores of election deniers in state offices who could end up controlling the 2024 presidential election in some key battlegrounds. GOP dominance of state legislatures could further curtail voting rights.
High inflation has also always been a toxic force that brews political extremism and tempts some voters to be drawn to demagogues and radicals whose political creed is based on stoking resentment and stigmatizing outsiders.
If Democrats do lose big on Tuesday night, Trump will be a beneficiary.
What voters care about? Key word: ECONOMY
Nothing kicks off the fall festivities quite like the annual Pumpkin Show. It’s been called the “Greatest Free Show on Earth”.
This year, the only thing weighing more than the 1800-pound pumpkin on the minds of some residents, and voters, is the cost of living.
In her view, the current Democratic leadership in Washington “doesn’t care about and has forgotten the little people in Ohio”. She said the Democrats care about unrelatable things, citing as one example the push towards electric cars that she cannot afford.
Despite record job numbers and some reasons for inflation beyond Democrats’ control, they have faltered in their messaging on the economy, while Republicans have hammered them, the party in power, continuously on it. Polls show it has worked to the advantage of Republicans.
Inflation is top of mind
Ohio used to be a swing state, but it has been moving further to the right in recent years. The state went to former President Trump in 2016 and 2020, partly because of his promise to bring manufacturing jobs back to the US.
Inflation is only adding to difficulties for the Democrats here and nationally. According to an ABC News/IPSOS poll conducted less than three weeks before the election, more Americans trust Republicans over Democrats on both the economy and gas prices.
“We care how much eggs are at the grocery store,” Ms Stephens told the BBC. “18 eggs, $7.85, that is unaffordable for someone with three kids; even with both of us working it’s unaffordable.”
She leans conservative, but said she doesn’t tend to fill out her ballot solely for one party.
Jerome Phillips, 59, on the other hand, voted for President Joe Biden and the Democrats in 2020. He doesn’t know who he will cast his ballot for this time around. Jerome blames former President Donald Trump for the “terrible economy,” but says Mr Biden has been “a total disappointment”.
“He hasn’t done anything in office to help the economy, nothing at all,” he said. “Prices are going up, you can’t eat.”
According to a mid-October survey from the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, inflation was the dominant economic concern for Americans. Almost three quarters of the respondents were worried about the prices for food and consumer goods, closely followed by gasoline and energy and the cost of housing.
Pew’s report found that these concerns were widely shared across demographic groups and income categories. While the survey found a slight partisan tilt in answers, still a sizable majority of both Democrats (66%) and Republicans (81%) said they were very concerned about inflation.
The economy on the campaign trail
President Biden has tried touting his blue-collar credentials and selling a vision of building a better America for everyone with an economy that grows from the “bottom up and the middle out”.
At a recent Democratic National Committee event, he warned Republicans would cause chaos in the US economy and they were “doubling down on their MAGA trickle-down economics that benefits the very wealthy”.
Democrats have defended Mr Biden’s record, pointing to the fact that inflation is a global phenomenon and record job recovery amidst the pandemic. The United States economy added 261,000 jobs in October, bringing the total of new jobs since President Biden took office to over 10 million. That’s more than what every other president saw during their first 20 months.
But some Democratic candidates have distanced themselves from Mr Biden, whose approval rating is below 50%. Instead, they have tried to highlight what they view as the party’s achievements on passing long awaited action on infrastructure, climate, healthcare and student debt.
Nevertheless, Democrats’ various “wins” won’t be felt by voters for months or years.
Mike Lux, a Democratic strategist who has researched voting trends in America’s industrial heartland, said Democrats should have done more, earlier. While he believed candidates such as Tim Ryan in Ohio and John Fetterman in Pennsylvania did a good job explaining how they would address inflation and fight for working people, he said a lot of candidates have been focused solely on the abortion issue.
Meanwhile, Republicans have seized on inflation fears and gas prices to accuse Democrats of spending too much, a frequent talking point, and limiting energy production.
The current surge in gas prices, largely determined by supply and demand, is due to the war in Ukraine. Still, Republicans have blamed Democratic policies and have vowed to open-up oil drilling and pipelines to make America energy independent.
Mr Lux, the Democratic strategist, said that Democrats should have been out talking about inflation and the economy and owning the narrative precisely because it’s a tough issue that’s dominating the political landscape. “I think avoiding the issue is the worst thing that Democrats can possibly do,” he said.
Messaging on inflation is still far more dominant in Republican political ads, according to an analysis by the Wesleyan Media Project. Last month, 32% of pro-Republican party ads were on inflation compared to 8% of pro-Democrat ads. The reverse is true for abortion, with 28% of pro-Democratic ads focused on the issue compared to just 3% of Republican ads.
Gunner Ramer, political director of the anti-Trump GOP group, the Republican Accountability project, said Republicans have spent tens of millions hitting Democrats on the economy and inflation and have found that it is a very effective message.
The problem for Democrats, Mr Ramer explained, is that as with any party in power, the blame would fall on them for any economic troubles voters were facing no matter how much they touted any successes. “Kitchen table issues still matter and Democrats are going to be punished for that,” he said.
In the meantime, low income families continue to be hit the hardest by inflation.
Jameka Humphries, a single mother, was just able to move into a nicer school district for her son Jayden. Despite working three jobs, her purchasing power has been diminished by inflation.
“Without inflation I would feel more confident in the future,” she said, “and more confident in making long-term decisions.”
She doesn’t blame Democrats or Mr Biden for her tough times, but she doesn’t give him a ringing endorsement either. “I don’t think he does a bad job, and I don’t think he’s done a good job. He just does the job,” she said.
Ms Humphries doesn’t yet know how she will vote when she heads to the polls. While there are other issues at play during this election – the inflation and the economy could be what breaks Democrats’ hopes this November.
After all, it’s the economy stupid, as the Democrats’ own mantra reminds them.
