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Americans are paying close attention to the economy headed into next year’s presidential election — and a chunk of them say that so far, they haven’t benefited from President Joe Biden’s approach.
Half of Americans say their financial situation has gotten worse since the 2020 election, according to a new survey from Bankrate that was conducted Sept. 28 to Oct. 6.
Of those who shared that their situation hadn’t improved, 45% said the president is at least partially to blame for their souring finances, the survey showed. A little more than a third placed blame on Congress, and 27% pointed to the Federal Reserve. Nearly four in 10 respondents said they don’t blame any of those federal leaders for the lack of improvement.
Factors including the rising cost of living and shrinking short-term savings were among those posing financial challenges for respondents, the survey indicated.
Regardless of their own financial situation, the overwhelming majority of Americans will be paying close attention to the course of the economy in the year ahead, the survey showed.
Almost nine in 10 Americans said that the handling of the economy will be a key decision-making factor for them heading into the 2024 election.
“The plight of the economy over the next 12 months may help to dictate whether it was wise, or not, for President Biden to trumpet the branding of ‘Bidenomics’,” Mark Hamrick, senior economic analyst for Bankrate, said in a statement.
The survey matches up with recent reports showing that, despite continued spending and impressive economic growth in the third quarter, Americans remain stubbornly pessimistic in their view of the economy.
The University of Michigan’s gauge of consumer sentiment dropped sharply in October to its lowest level since May. And despite indications that retail sales will be strong during the holiday shopping season, consumers are giving mixed signals on how good they feel about their own finances heading into the holidays.
That could be bad news for President Biden, who was trailing former President Donald Trump in five key battleground states in a recent poll from The New York Times and Siena College.
In the Bankrate survey, Republicans were more than twice as likely as Democrats to say their financial situation had gotten worse since the last presidential election.
But Tuesday’s elections stirred some optimism for Democrats, with victories in Kentucky, Virginia and Ohio suggesting the party could offset economic cynicism and Biden’s weak approval ratings with wins on other issues, such as abortion rights.
People’s opinions about the economy tend to fall along partisan lines, and may say more about their feelings about who is in the White House than economic trends on the ground. A CBS News poll in August found that 52% of Democrats rated the economy as “good,” while 15% of Republicans did.
At the beginning of 2023, Democrats were far more likely than Republicans to predict positive developments for the U.S. economy in the year ahead, a Gallup poll found, with 36% of Democrats forecasting “economic prosperity,” compared with 4% of Republicans.
In 2017, just after Donald Trump took office, expectations for the next six months sunk to a near historic low among Democrats, while Republicans’ expectations were near a record high, according to a University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey taken then.
“With 3 in 4 Americans saying their personal finances are either worse or about the same, the risk for President Biden is that he’ll get more blame than credit for the economy,” Hamrick said in the release. “But there’s still a long way to go before election day.”
