A top Democratic polling firm is confirming what Republicans have been claiming for months: Voters are feeling the burden of rising inflation, and President Joe Biden and his party are suffering politically because of it.
In focus groups conducted by Navigator Research in the battleground states of Nevada, North Carolina, and Wisconsin, a mix of Democrats, soft Republicans, and independents described the economy in negative terms, most often citing the rising cost of groceries and other household goods. Presented with economic indicators that reveal a robustly growing economy and a steadily shrinking unemployment rate, these voters shrugged and, based on their own personal experiences, questioned whether the statistics were manipulated.
“In our focus groups, respondents organically cited and trusted an inflation rate of 8.5% but were surprised or distrusting to hear about the millions of new jobs created in the last year,” Bryan Bennett, an adviser at Navigator Research, said in a statement. “That’s a major messaging problem that progressives have six months to fix.”
Biden’s average job approval rating has sunk to 41%, and the Republicans’ average lead on the generic congressional ballot has grown to 3.5 percentage points. Though polling is a snapshot in time, this data, taken together, portends a rough November for Democrats on the 2022 ballot and the potential for a red wave that, once it subsides, leaves Republicans in control of Congress and key governor’s mansions across the country.
If Democrats are to turn things around before Election Day and at least stem their losses, Biden is going to have to convince voters that his agenda is responsible for the economic turnaround since the worst of the coronavirus pandemic abated. But discussions with voters from the Navigator Research focus groups in Nevada, North Carolina, and Wisconsin suggest the president might not be able to do that unless inflation stops climbing and prices drop significantly.
“The pain of inflation can’t simply be solved by pointing to jobs numbers despite how historic they are — progressives must show they have a clear road to recovery,” Bennett said.
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The economic indicators that focus group participants were presented with were, among others: “More than six million jobs were created last year, the largest number of any year on record,” “the unemployment rate fell from 6.2 percent in the beginning of last year to 3.6 percent in March,” and “there are fewer jobless claims right now than any time since 1968.”
But the focus group participants, which included “low-motivation” soft Republicans from North Carolina, low-motivation Democrats from Nevada, and low-motivation independents from Wisconsin, were not impressed. Here are key exchanges from the focus groups as presented by Navigator Research in a PowerPoint presentation made available to the press.
- Nevada woman: “It’s terrible. It’s terrible. With inflation, gas price is rising, cost of food. I literally just went grocery shopping yesterday, spent $700 on what? This time, last year would’ve filled my refrigerator up, and it’s barely [enough] because I have three teenagers at home.”
- North Carolina man: “I’m always complaining to my wife about her spending too much in groceries. She’s, like, ‘I’m buying the same stuff that I did six months ago.’ So I definitely can see it.”
- Wisconsin woman: “The prices are high. The food prices have gone up. The price of food has gone up, and they’ve taken out. And they’ve given you less. It used to be 16 ounces. Now it’s 13, and they hope you don’t notice. And sometimes you can go in the store the next day, a price will be 20 cent[s] higher.”
- North Carolina woman: “So you can tell me it’s doing great, but if I’m struggling to buy groceries and gas and will be out of a job for real in two months, that to me is saying, no, it’s not really doing that great.”
- Wisconsin woman: “And according to them, the 6 million jobs that were created, good. The economy has rebounded, so they say. But I don’t believe it. [Moderator: So what would you want to see in order to feel like, OK, the economy is rebounding? What kind of fact or number would you want to see?] Oh, prices going down. Gas prices down.”
If there’s a bright spot at all for Democrats in the midterm elections, from the Navigator Research focus groups, it might be that participants believe corporations are at least partly responsible for the runaway inflation, an assessment that happens to fit with Biden’s messaging strategy for explaining historically higher prices on his watch.
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- Nevada man: “The oil companies [have] been able to get away with it because, as everybody knows, they support [those] political campaigns. When gas [prices] go up, everything, of course, will go up, food, everything, because transportation [costs] go up. Everything to transport the goods and all that we’d need will go up.”
- Wisconsin woman: “Businesses, corporations. Yes. They’re making record profits. For us, the people, the consumer, there are few people that are making money. But the corporations are making profit. Paying zero taxes.”
- North Carolina man: “I work in supply chain and supply chain costs are just through the roof right now. But all these companies are making record profits. So is it really COVID? Is it really prices or is it just greed?”
