Inflation Continues To Top List Of Voter Concerns

A new survey from Monmouth University has found that inflation remains the most important issue for voters, despite economic indicators suggesting that wages have outpaced inflation for a sustained period.

• Voter perceptions of inflation appear stubbornly resistance to changes in the economy. Detailed analysis by 538 on the relationship between inflation and voting habits found that inflation wasn't "statistically significant" to consumer views of the economy historically, rather, "salient variables appear to be vehicle sales, gas prices, median household income, the federal funds effective rate, personal savings and household expenditures (excluding food and energy)," were the most important factors.
• Ryan Cummings, a former staff economist at the White House, said: "You have a lot of people today that really don't have any experience with any sort of substantial inflation, and so now they're seeing it for the first time. People were used to seeing almost zero inflation."
• 538 notes that a regression model designed by Cummings founds that, "if inflation spikes to 12 percent — or 10 percentage points above the Federal Reserve's 2 percent target — the Consumer Sentiment Index drops by about 35 points. And that effect lingers, with a decay rate of about 50 percent per year. But since Americans are currently reeling from the aftershocks of not only this year's 3.2 percent year-over-year inflation but also last year's 7.8 percent inflation and 2022's 6.2 percent inflation, it creates a cumulative effect on consumer sentiment."

Figure 1: Top Concerns for American Families

Source: Monmouth University Polling