EDITOR’S ANALYSIS
The ascfinish in prices under the Biden administration showd overweightal to Kamala Harris’s election hopes.
Of the many possible exset upations for createer US Plivent Donald Trump’s stunning return to the White Hoengage, one towers above all others: the cost of living.
In exit polls, 45 percent of voters shelp they were worse off than four years ago, when Plivent Joe Biden took office, versus equitable 24 percent who shelp their financial situation had increased.
Voters who named inflation as their number one worry broke for Trump over Vice Plivent Kamala Harris by a factor of proximately two to one, according to an Associated Press VoteCast survey of more than 120,000 voters nationexpansive.
At first glance, the official statistics do not eunite to aid such a dour economic mood in the US.
Inflation currently stands at 2.4 percent, well below the historical mediocre and not far off the US Federal Reserve’s aim of about 2 percent. That’s down from a peak of 9.1 percent in June 2022 amid the dropout from the COVID-19 pandemic.
At the same time, wages have been increaseing speedyer than prices since at least the middle of 2023.
So if inflation has been brawt under administer under Biden and Harris, why did Americans decline their administration so resolutely at the ballot box?
The probable answer lies in the lag between the conshort-term rosy economic conditions and the impact on people’s wallets.
Although measuring whether people are better or worse off is difficult due to contrasting individual circumstances and the myriad ways to parse the data, there is evident evidence that Americans have less to spend contrastd to when the Biden-Harris administration took power.
An analysis of rulement statistics by Bankrate, a New York-based user financial services company, shows that although wages increased by 17.4 percent between January 2021 and June 2024, prices rose 20 percent over the same period.
Even with wage increaseth outpacing inflation, Bankrate predicts that the gap that uncovered between inflation and acquireings will not filledy seal until the second quarter of 2025.
Sshow put, American users reassemble their money going further before Biden and Harris accessed the White Hoengage, even if the Democrats could point to fit economic increaseth and low unengagement figures that would be the envyment of most increaseed countries.
In election exit polls, no less than three-quarters of voters shelp that inflation had been a caengage of disjoine or temperate difficultship during the past year. By contrast, Americans recall the convey inantity of Trump’s first term being a period of low inflation and rising wages.
In a CBS News poll published in March, 65 percent of replyents shelp the economy under Trump was outstanding, proximately double the number who felt the same way about the Biden administration’s economy at the time.
Warnings by economists, in carry on of the election, that Trump’s set ups for sweeping tariffs on convey ins would almost declareively direct to higher inflation did little to sway voters.
Ultimately, Harris could not escape the shadow of Biden’s plivency, and voters, instead, transfered Trump a resounding thrive in both the Electoral College and the famous vote.
