President Biden plans to tout encouraging economic signs and his planned second-term agenda in Thursday’s State of the Union address, but polls show that young and nonwhite Americans are disgusted by high prices. It shows that they haven’t gotten people back yet.
Two Ipsos polls conducted earlier this year found that American adults, by a double-digit margin, trust former President Donald Trump, Biden’s likely Republican opponent, to successfully manage inflation and the economy. There was found.
According to one survey, four in 10 Americans say they would support Mr. Trump’s economic approach if elected to a second non-consecutive term, compared to 4 in 10 who said they would support Mr. Biden. It was 30%. January Ipsos Survey.
of next monthPresident Trump rates even higher, with 43% of respondents saying they trust him more to manage the economy and 31% saying they trust Biden more.
Now, the same share has more confidence in the incumbent president to lower inflation, while 41% have more confidence in Trump on this issue.
“That was Biden’s Achilles heel,” Cliff Young, president of communications at Ipsos, told the Post. “He’s bad at it for a variety of reasons, but he’s also weak at it.”
“He still has problems with younger voters, minorities, wealthier, less educated voters, and he’s lost most of them to inflation,” Young explained.
These voters include traditional Republicans who helped hand the presidency to Biden in 2020, but whose support has returned to Trump with eight months left until Election Day. He added that it is growing.
“He needs to really strengthen them,” Young stressed, adding that Biden also needs to retain Democratic voters who are concerned about being seen as a threat to democracy by proxying anti-Trump votes. he added.
The president is expected to renew his “Bidenomics” economic policy on Thursday night, which supports massive public investment in infrastructure and renewable energy.
While Biden also praised his administration’s success in creating jobs and lowering unemployment, he also criticized billionaires for not paying their “fair share” of income taxes and for companies to increase the size of essential goods without lowering prices. He blamed it for shrinking.
“Bidenomics is about the future. Bidennomics is just another way of saying, ‘Take back the American dream because it used to work,'” he said at a campaign event in Chicago last June. Told.
“We created 13.4 million new jobs, more jobs in two years than any president has created in four years.”
However, under the Biden administration, inflation also reached a 40-year high in June 2022, with the consumer price index at 9.1%. As of January, CPI has fallen again. 3.1%The rate remains higher than it was before the coronavirus pandemic, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Young also warned the president against relying too much on trends that gave Democrats better-than-expected results in the 2022 midterm elections, such as leaning on issues like abortion after Roe v. Wade was overturned. .
“The Dobbs decision, and more specifically abortion, is one of the symbols of the anti-Trump vote,” Young said of the Supreme Court’s June 2022 decision.
“It has less to do with this particular issue and more to do with general issues, obviously from a Democratic perspective, with Mr. Trump in general,” he added. “So it becomes a mobilizing force that gets people out of bed and out to vote.”
The right stance on issues important to voters could be enough to protect the 81-year-old Biden from the obvious weakness of age.
“59% of Americans think both Biden and Trump are too old,” Young said, referring to the latest Ipsos poll. “27% think Biden is the only one who is too old, compared to just 3% for Trump.”
In particular, after Nikki Haley’s presidential campaign suspension on Wednesday, Young said she was “consciously trying to appeal to Biden’s core base of support rather than strengthening her core base.” ” He added that the effort was “less important.”
“He just needs to step up and really emphasize that the economy is improving and show what he’s done to help the economy, but he’s not getting any credit.” Mr. Young said.
“And if he doesn’t position democracy as democracy in the State of the Union, he importantly positions it as a kind of repair of a broken America, or guarantee of a vibrant America. I’m actually going to tell you what’s going to happen.”
