New polling released over the last few days shows that Democrat President Joe Biden and his party are in serious trouble as this November’s 2022 midterm elections near.
A CBS News poll found that nearly two thirds of Americans said that the “national economy” was “bad,” which they blame on skyrocketing inflation rates and gas prices:
Higher prices are leading people to say they’re making cutbacks, especially on more discretionary items like entertainment and travel. (That may, of course, have a wider impact on the economy later.) About half are cutting back on food and groceries, and this is especially the case among those with lower incomes. … Biden gets his lowest approval ratings on the economy and inflation. And on gas prices specifically, most think he could be doing more to lower them. Nearly all Republicans share this view. They believe his policies are doing “a lot” to contribute to higher gas prices.
The poll found that the top issues for voters were the economy, inflation, and crime, and that Biden gets “low marks on handling them” with more than 60% of Americans disapproving of the way that Biden has handled all three issues.
…and President Biden continues to get low marks on handling them. pic.twitter.com/GBLjBFbgqv
— CBS News Poll (@CBSNewsPoll) April 10, 2022
NBC polling analyst Steve Kornacki went over polling on Sunday that the network previously conducted showing that college educated men went from being +16 for the Democrats in the last midterm election to now being +10 for the Republicans, a 26-point shift.
Politico reported over the weekend that leading experts have indicated that “angry voters slammed by higher prices and scarred by two years of fighting the pandemic are poised to punish Democrats in midterm elections” and that “with inflation persisting and Russia’s war on Ukraine stoking uncertainty, there are indications that public sentiment is getting worse, not better.”
The report added:
The widely watched University of Michigan consumer confidence survey recently touched its lowest level in almost 11 years. An Associated Press/NORC survey showed that almost 70 percent of Americans think the economy is in poor shape, and 81 percent of those in a poll released by CNBC see a recession coming this year. Gallup found the share of Americans citing inflation as the top issue is now at its highest level since the 1980s.
“The big run-up in gas and food and home prices has really caused great hardship for many households,” said Richard Curtin, a veteran economist who has run the University of Michigan consumer survey since 1976. “And the Biden administration made a critical error in saying it would be transient and people should just tough it out. It wasn’t transient. A lot of people couldn’t just tough it out. And it caused a big loss of confidence in [President Joe Biden’s] policies.”
Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, said, “Most Americans have never experienced high inflation like this, particularly on gas prices, and it has gotten everyone very upset. Behavioral economics reveals that people hate inflation more than they love a low unemployment rate. And the pandemic still colors everything. People have been through the wringer.”