It’s the prices, stupid.
President Biden is struggling to connect with voters — and has become more unpopular as a result — because he’s not emphasizing the same issues they care about, such as lowering inflation, a survey released Tuesday reveals.
“Bidenomics isn’t resonating with most voters, because they don’t see it as focused on their top economic priority: lowering the prices on goods, services, and gas,” the poll conducted by BluePrint/YouGov found.
According to the survey, 64% of voters say the prices of goods, services, and gas are the part of the economy they would most like to see improved.
Biden, meanwhile, has largely touted job creation, only cited by 7% of voters as most important to them.
About three-quarters (73%) of respondents desired lower costs when factoring in the 9% who most wanted a drop in rates on mortgages and credit cards.
One in five voters (20%) said they wanted higher wages the most.
However, the poll found that 43% of voters said Biden was focused on jobs while only 23% of respondents said he was focused on lowering costs — most voters’ top economic priority.
By comparison, a total of 72% of voters said Republicans were more focused on lowering costs — with 54% citing lowering prices on goods, services, and gas and 18% on shaving interest rates on mortgage debt and credit cards.
Similarly, 73% of voters said former President Donald Trump, the front-runner for the GOP nomination, is focusing on lowering these costs.
Biden is also losing the messaging war, the poll finds.
More than three-quarters of voters — 77% — said they were aware of the dramatic rise in inflation since 2021 but far fewer — 38% — knew it had fallen from those record highs, the survey said.
Voters were almost evenly split when asked about “Bidenomics” — with 51% saying it was good for the economy and 49% bad.
Another aspect of the messaging deficit is that voters are hearing more about Biden’s unpopular policies, Blueprint said.
For example, 84% of voters said they were aware of Biden’s policy of canceling student debt — but only 52% of voters supported that.
Meanwhile, 74% of voters support increased oil and gas drilling to bolster the energy supply that has occurred under Biden, but less than half of voters say the president is responsible for it.
Elsewhere, only 46% of voters have heard of Biden’s questionable claim of reducing the federal deficit by $1.7 trillion—an accomplishment 89% of voters support.
Just 49% of voters have heard of Biden capping out-of-pocket Medicare prescription drug spending at $2,000 a year, but 83% of voters support the policy
“Biden is being defined by his progressive policies,” said Evan Roth Smith, founder partner of Slingshot Strategies, who oversaw the YouGov poll conducted for Blueprint, a new public opinion research initiative.
Smith also said the attempt by Biden and the Democrats to paint Republicans as too extreme has fallen flat.
The poll found that voters do not view Trump and the GOP as more ideologically extreme than Biden and the Democratic Party — 43% of voters believe Biden is “far” more liberal than they are; about an equal proportion, 41%, believe Trump is “far” more conservative than they are
Similarly, 60% of voters see the Democratic Party as “somewhat” or “far” more liberal than they are, while 57% of voters see the Republican Party as “somewhat” or “far” more conservative than they are
“Pushing [the] ‘extreme’ angle on Republicans just doesn’t work,” Smith said.
The Biden disconnect may help explain why Biden is trailing Trump in five key battleground states, according to a recent NY Times/Siena College poll.
The Blueprint-commissioned national survey conducted by YouGov queried 1,063 voters from Oct. 26 to Nov, 2. using web panel respondents.
The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.3 percentage points