Only 16% of Americans say Biden has helped the middle class
Middle-class Americans feeling sour about Biden's economic policies
Inflation concerns push blue-collar workers to vote red in 2024
Working class voters John Cataneo, Phillip Downell and Andrew Craig join 'America's Newsroom' to explain the real-world impact of inflation on everyday Americans
Just a fraction of Americans believe the economic policies enacted by President Biden are helping middle-class families, according to a new poll.
Findings published Tuesday by Monmouth University show that while roughly half of the public gives some credit to Biden for improving the U.S. economy, only a few say the upturn has actually helped their families.
About 22% of respondents said the president deserves a "great deal" of credit for the state of the economy, while 26% said he deserves some credit. But 14% said Biden does not deserve much credit, and another 36% of respondents said he deserves no credit at all.
The responses were split largely down party lines, with nine out of 10 Democrats giving the president at least some credit for improving the economy, while just one out of 10 Republicans said the same.
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President Joe Biden during an event at the Old Post Office in Chicago, Illinois, on June 28, 2023. (Taylor Glascock/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)
"When it comes to making a connection between the national economy and Americans’ own well-being, Biden is doing about as well as Obama did among his fellow Democrats and similar to how Trump performed among Republicans," said Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute. "The problem for Biden is he is doing decidedly worse than either of his two predecessors among independents."
Middle-class Americans are also feeling sour about Biden's policies, dealing a potential blow to the president less than one year out from the 2024 election. Just 16% of middle-class families say they have benefited "a lot" under Biden, compared to 41% of wealthy families and 22% of lower-income families.
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Those numbers are worse than former President Donald Trump's were when he was in office, according to the survey.
"The administration can beat the drum on all sorts of positive economic news. From the standpoint of Biden’s presidential campaign, however, if voters don’t think this bounty is reaching the middle class, then that can become the economic ‘fact’ which matters most," Murray said.
Customers shop at a supermarket in Foster City, California, on Sept. 13, 2023. (Li Jianguo/Xinhua via Getty Images / Getty Images)
The White House has lauded a mostly steady yearlong decline in inflation, but most economists agree that is due to the Federal Reserve's aggressive interest rate hike campaign and the resolution of supply chain disruptions, not the president's economic agenda.
While inflation has fallen considerably from a peak of 9.1% notched during June 2022, it remains well above the Federal Reserve's 2% goal. And when compared with January 2021, shortly before the inflation crisis began, prices are up a stunning 17.6%.
Many families have yet to see material relief. Food prices are up 33.7% from the start of 2021, while shelter costs are up 18.7%, according to FOX Business calculations. Energy prices, meanwhile, are up 32.8%.
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Chronically high prices are forcing Americans to spend about $1,019 more per month than they did three years ago, before the inflation crisis began, according to a recent estimate from Moody's Analytics.
As they spend more on everyday goods, Americans are burning through their savings, and are increasingly turning to credit cards to cover those basic expenses.
The burden is disproportionately borne by low-income Americans, whose already-stretched paychecks are heavily affected by price fluctuations.