A new survey shows that voters trust the Republican Party to handle key issues like inflation and the economy more than Democrats, as the 2022 midterm season approaches.
The survey of more than 2,000 registered voters, conducted by Morning Consult/Politico between March 25-27, found that a plurality of voters favor Congressional Republicans on issues like inflation by wide margins.
According to the survey, 46% of voters said they trusted the Republican Party to handle the issue of inflation, compared to just 32% of voters who said they trusted Democrats, a 14-point margin; 22% said they did not know or had no opinion. Voters also trusted Republicans to handle national security and the economy by double-digit margins: 48% of voters said they trusted the GOP on national security, compared to 35% who trusted Democrats; 18% had no opinion. Another 47% of voters trusted the GOP to handle the economy, while just 36% trusted Democrats; 17% had no opinion.
Republicans also held advantages on other issues. Voters favored Republicans on immigration, 45%-38%, and on gun policy by the same margin. Republicans were also favored on jobs, 45%-39%. The two parties were evenly split, 40%-40%, on the issue of energy. Democrats held the advantage on issues including COVID-19, voting rights, education, Medicare and Social Security, health care, climate change, and the environment.
Importantly, Independent voters favored the Republican Party on economic issues by wide margins. Independents favored the GOP on inflation by a 23-point margin: 40% favored Republicans, while just 17% favored Democrats. On the economy, Independents favored Republicans by a 21-point margin: 43%-22%; and on jobs, Republicans were favored by a 14-point margin, 41%-27%.
The Morning Consult/Politico poll comes on the heels of another poll that found that inflation is the most important issue for voters in the 2022 midterms. The Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll of nearly 2,000 registered voters, reported by The Hill, found that a plurality of voters, 32%, said that inflation was the most important issue facing the country, while 27% said that the most important issue was the economy, and 21% said that it was immigration. More than three-fourths of respondents in that poll, 76%, said that they had been impacted by inflation, either a lot or somewhat. Nearly half of the respondents, 46%, said they anticipated that inflation would stay at a high level, while 35% feared that it would go even higher.
The same poll found that a majority of voters thought both the economy and the country as a whole were on the wrong track: 60% of voters said that the economy was on the wrong track, while just 32% said that it was on the right track; 58% of voters said that the country as a whole was on the wrong track, while just 34% said that it was on the right track. The poll also found that Republicans carried a 6-point advantage in the generic Congressional ballot. In the generic ballot test, 53% of respondents said they would support the Republican candidate for Congress, while 47% supported the Democratic candidate. Independents favored the Republican candidate by an even wider margin, with 59% supporting the generic Republican and 41% supporting the generic Democrat.
Leading media figures are already sounding the alarm for Democrats ahead of the midterms. NBC host Chuck Todd warned on Wednesday that Democrats are headed for a “shellacking” in the midterms after an NBC News poll found that 71% of voters said that the country was on the wrong track, while just 22% said that it was on the right track, as The Daily Wire reported. “Sixty-five percent wrong track is a bad number. Seventy-one percent? That’s why it is in the shellacking category,” Todd said.