In what looks like bad news for President Joe Biden and his Democratic Party, a new Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in early December found that fear of the coronavirus is no longer Americans’ prime concern — the economy, with fear of inflation and rising cost of living, dwarfed the fear of the coronavirus.
The poll found a huge 68% of respondents mentioned the economy in some way as a top worry for 2022, as opposed to 37% naming the coronavirus. AP stated:
Just 37% of Americans name the virus as one of their top five priorities for the government to work on in 2022, compared with 53% who said it was a leading priority at the same time a year ago. The economy outpaced the pandemic in the open-ended question, with 68% of respondents mentioning it in some way as a top 2022 concern. A similar percentage said the same last year, but mentions of inflation are much higher now: 14% this year, compared with less than 1% last year.
“Consumer prices jumped 6.8% for the 12 months ending in November, a nearly four-decade high,” AP noted adding, “Meanwhile, roughly twice as many Americans now mention their household finances, namely, the cost of living, as a governmental priority, 24% vs. 12% last year.”
Adam Brandon, president of FreedomWorks, remarked vis-à-vis the Biden administration’s actions and the coronavirus, “It’s certainly not the victory the Democrats thought it would be. We’ll have another wave next year, and I just don’t think anyone’s going to care. I think we’re going to get to a point where everyone’s just going to have to learn to live with it. This will die with a whimper as people just lose interest.”
A recent Fox Business survey found 47% of respondents felt that President Biden’s policies were “hurting” the economy; only 22% felt they were “helping,” The Daily Wire noted, pointing out, “Likewise, 46% believe that Biden’s social spending agenda would ‘push inflation higher,’ while 21% believe it would ‘help lower inflation.’”
The Daily Wire added:
Other insights from the Fox Business poll include:
- Rising prices over the last six months have caused financial hardship for two-thirds of voters. That climbs to three-quarters among those living in lower-income households.
- By more than two-to-one, people say the president’s economic policies have hurt rather than helped them personally. That’s largely driven by almost two-thirds of Republicans saying they’ve been hurt — nearly five times the number of Democrats who say the same. For comparison, one-third of Democrats said they had been hurt by former President Donald Trump’s economic policies in a December 2018 Fox News survey.
- Just 1 in 6 voters say they are better off financially than they were a year ago, and a majority rates their personal financial situation negatively. That’s a reversal since August, when over half said their finances were in positive shape.