Brighter Economic Mood Isn’t Translating Into Support for Biden

Eight months before the election, Americans feel slightly better about the state of the economy as inflation recedes and the labor market remains stable, but President Biden doesn’t appear to be benefiting.

Among registered voters nationwide, 26 percent believe the economy is good or excellent, according to polling in late February by The New York Times and Siena College. That share is up six percentage points since July. The movement occurred disproportionately among older Democrats, a constituency already likely to vote for Mr. Biden.

And the share of voters saying they approve of the job Mr. Biden is doing in office has actually fallen, to 36 percent in the latest poll, from 39 percent in July.

Inflation has pervaded economic sentiment since mid-2022, confronting voters daily with the price of everything from eggs to car insurance. Even as inflation has been falling since mid-2023 — and wage growth has lately outpaced the rate of price increases, at least on average — many Americans don’t yet see the problem as solved. Nearly two-thirds of registered voters in the Times/Siena poll rated the price of food and consumer goods as poor.

Mr. Biden’s team has pointed to an array of indications that the economy has rebounded remarkably well since he assumed office, including an unemployment rate that has been under 4 percent for two years and a stock market that has set record after record.

But in a persistent trend that has confounded pollsters and economists, those fundamentals largely haven’t been reflected in surveys. Forty percent of those surveyed said the economy was worse than it was a year earlier, compared with 23 percent who thought it was better — even though a narrow majority rated their personal financial situation as good or excellent.

“For me, personally, I’m above water,” said Mary Sandberg, a 45-year-old Democratic voter in central Kansas. “For a lot of people, that isn’t true.”

Ms. Sandberg lives in a rural area, where her nursing salary is enough to support a family and own a home — at least for someone lucky enough to buy before interest rates skyrocketed, as she was. But she sees friends working six days a week with hardly any money left over, and she worries that her children will never be able to afford homes.

Ms. Sandberg doesn’t blame Mr. Biden, instead pointing the finger at corporations for raising prices and at Republicans in Congress for blocking Democrats’ efforts to help. But the economy — or at least their perception of it — is causing problems for Mr. Biden with some Democrats.

Katherine Besenty, 25, graduated from college in 2020, just as the pandemic was shutting down much of the U.S. economy. She has spent the past few years bouncing between low-paying retail jobs while living with her mother in New Jersey. Mr. Biden, she said, has done little to help people like her — and at this point, she isn’t sure she will vote in November.

“I honestly really haven’t seen much of a difference in terms of me being personally affected,” she said. “My job search hasn’t improved, my income hasn’t improved.”

Still, there are signs that Americans’ assessment of the economy might be turning around. Thirty percent of respondents in the Times/Siena poll expect the economy to be better a year from now. And the share of respondents rating the economy good or excellent, though still low, has risen since July among nearly all demographic and educational groups.

There is also evidence of a deep partisan divide in economic perceptions, with Democrats seeing more positive news about inflation than Republicans. But other surveys of overall economic sentiment, such as those from Pew Research Center and the University of Michigan, have rebounded in recent months. History suggests that the process should continue, and that peaking sentiment tends to correlate with victory for incumbent presidents.

Economic vibes don’t necessarily predict electoral outcomes, though, and this campaign is different in many ways from those in the past. “We’re kind of in an unprecedented situation where we’re weighing two incumbents,” said Joanne Hsu, who runs the Michigan survey.

Anthony Rice, a 54-year-old Democrat in eastern Indiana, and pretty much everyone he knows, he said, are doing well right now. Gas prices are down, jobs are plentiful, and Mr. Rice, a unionized dump-truck driver, is benefiting directly from the infrastructure law that Mr. Biden signed in 2021. Yet few people in the deep-red part of the country where he lives will acknowledge that, Mr. Rice said.

“There are more people now that are working, have better jobs, have more chances to get better jobs now than at any other time,” he said. “I don’t understand why they can’t see how good it is.”

Amber Wichowsky, a political scientist at Marquette University who has studied voters’ economic perceptions, said it was not surprising that many Americans might be feeling uneasy despite strong economic data. The pandemic and its aftermath were deeply disruptive, she said, and it isn’t surprising that it could take time for things to feel normal again.

The question, Ms. Wichowsky said, is how much, if at all, voters’ views will shift as the campaign gets underway in earnest. So far, Mr. Biden has made little apparent progress in selling his economic message, but many voters aren’t yet paying attention. In the coming months, the Biden campaign will also ramp up a sales effort for the president’s economic record — including billions of dollars in spending on infrastructure and clean energy, which will become easier to communicate as projects get underway.

“The big unknown to me is how this looks when the campaign really gets going,” Ms. Wichowsky said.

Still, the campaign is unlikely to have much effect on the views of Republicans, who overwhelmingly see the economy as negative.

“People keep saying, ‘Oh, the economy’s getting better under Joe Biden’ — no, it’s not,” said Reed Olin, a 48-year-old Republican in Gainesville, Fla.

A disabled veteran, Mr. Olin said that with prices high, he was struggling to make ends meet with the benefits he got through the federal government. He said he liked former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to crack down on illegal immigration and bring manufacturing back to the United States (although the U.S. economy has more manufacturing jobs now than at any point during Mr. Trump’s presidency).

Underneath broad economic perceptions, voters give the job market better marks than they do inflation. But medicine administered by the Federal Reserve to cure inflation — higher interest rates — is taking its own toll, particularly through the cost of housing.Although moderating from their highs at the end of last year, mortgage interest rates remain around 7 percent on average. The run-up in housing prices that began during the pandemic has yet to subside, pushing a home purchase far beyond what many feel comfortable paying.

Housing burdens appear to be part of the sour mood. Fifty-three percent of voters see the housing market as poor, especially younger people and those who rent their homes. More than half of homeowners, 57 percent, rated their own finances as good or excellent, compared with 36 percent of renters.

Housing costs are top of mind for Cole Orosco, 30, an emergency medical technician in College Station, Texas, who frequently works overtime to cover living costs. His rent has risen to $1,350 a month over the past three years, from $1,089, and he despairs of buying a home at current prices.

Mr. Orosco identifies as a libertarian and said that he was open to a third-party candidate, but that he wasn’t inclined to vote for Mr. Biden because he felt the president had done nothing to help him — even student debt relief, which he had hoped would relieve him of $14,000 in remaining loans.

“That would have been extremely valuable to the middle class,” Mr. Orosco said. Mr. Biden’s efforts have often been blocked in the courts, but Mr. Orosco doesn’t give the president credit for trying. “At the end of the day, results are what’s going to be remembered,” he said.

Consumers have slowed their spending, and more of those purchases are going on credit cards. Loan delinquencies have also been  creeping up, especially for younger people who bought cars over the past couple of years when monthly payments escalated especially fast.

That situation may improve as the election approaches, with the Federal Reserve expected to begin cutting interest rates this summer. Most forecasters also expect inflation to continue to ease between now and Election Day.