Noah Smith’s post-election argument that Democrats underestimated inflation’s political cost is set against polls showing widespread price concerns, but the surveys do not identify what tipped voters to either candidate.
In an essay published Nov. 8, 2024, Smith argued that Democrats and some economists gave employment too much priority relative to inflation. Federal Election Commission results show Donald Trump won 312 electoral votes to Kamala Harris’ 226.
Gallup’s April 1–22 survey of 1,001 U.S. adults found 13% named inflation or the high cost of living among the country’s leading problems, compared with 2% who named jobs or unemployment; 17% named the economy generally. The reported margin of sampling error was ±4 percentage points. In a separate question about family finances, 41% named inflation or living costs as their main concern, up from 35% in 2023 and 32% in 2022.
In a Gallup survey of registered voters conducted Sept. 16–28, 52% said candidates’ positions on the economy were extremely important to their presidential vote, while 38% called them very important. That measure covered the economy broadly, not inflation alone.
Federal Reserve minutes from July 2021 record one part of the policy debate. Most Federal Open Market Committee participants judged that the “substantial further progress” benchmark had been met for price stability but not for maximum employment. They viewed recent inflation increases as likely temporary, citing supply bottlenecks and labor shortages, and kept the federal funds rate target range at 0% to 0.25%.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U), which was not seasonally adjusted, rose 9.1% in the 12 months through June 2022, the largest such increase since the period ending in November 1981. Seasonally adjusted real average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls fell 3.6% over that year. In January 2023, nonfarm payroll employment rose by 517,000 and unemployment was 3.4%, BLS reported.
Estimates of pandemic aid’s effect on prices differ in scope. A 2021 Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco study estimated the American Rescue Plan would temporarily add about 0.3 percentage point to core personal consumption expenditures inflation in 2021 and slightly more than 0.2 percentage point in 2022. A 2023 working paper by Óscar Jordà and Fernanda Nechio examined broader pandemic-era transfers, estimating that an increase equal to 5 percentage points of trend was associated with roughly 3 percentage points of additional inflation after four quarters. The Congressional Budget Office projected the Senate-passed rescue bill would add $1.856 trillion to deficits over 2021–2031; that budget estimate does not measure the bill’s effect on prices.
The polls document concern about prices, and the earnings data show a decline in purchasing power. They do not establish how much inflation influenced individual votes or settle Smith’s argument about policymakers’ priorities.
