You’ll see a flood of polls in the news over the final days of the midterm campaign, but these numbers may tell you much of what you need to know ahead of Election Day on Tuesday.
A new CNN poll conducted by SSRS finds that the economy and inflation are far and away the top concerns for likely voters, with 51% citing those issues as being most important to them followed by 15% who said abortion rights and 9% who pointed to voting rights.
So, as you’ve heard so often over the last 30 years, it’s the economy, stupid. And how do voters feel about the economy? Three-quarters of respondents in the CNN poll say they think the economy is in a recession now, including 91% of Republicans, 74% of independents and 61% of Democrats.
The latest poll from Politico and Morning Consult found similar views, Politico’s Brittany Gibson reports:
“Two-thirds of voters believe the economy is in a recession, despite new data released last week showing that the economy grew in the third quarter by a healthy annualized rate of 2.6 percent, according to the latest POLITICO/Morning Consult poll. It was the 16th consecutive week in the poll that more than 60 percent of voters said they believe the U.S. economy is already in a recession.”
Much like the CNN poll, the Politico survey found that 43% of voters called economic issues their top priority, far ahead of “women’s issues,” “security issues,” or “seniors issues.”
And with economic pessimism so prevalent, who do voters trust more to handle the economy? The CNN poll finds a massive advantage for Republicans on the question, with 71% of likely voters saying they trust the GOP more compared to just 18% for Democrats and 11% who say they don’t trust either party. Republicans had a narrower 46-39 edge in the Politico poll on the question of which party was more trusted to handle the economy. But that poll also found that voters were more likely to have heard about high inflation than about falling gas prices or wage gains.
The bottom line: Voters are pretty pessimistic about the economy overall, even as some surveys have found they feel fairly upbeat about their own finances.
