Most voters in a recent UMBC poll said they were worried about the prices of good and services, but Republicans were much more likely to feel that way than Democrats. Photo taken July 12 at Fry’s in downtown Phoenix. Photo by Evelin Ruelas/Cronkite News
Since the post-COVID-19 economic recovery, Americans have struggled to contend with persistently high prices for a wide variety of goods and services. Recently, the Federal Reserve acted to cut key interest rates, signaling that this inflationary pressure may finally be relenting.
Indeed, by some estimates, Americans’ average wages are close to catching up to the post-COVID inflation surge. The raises afforded to many workers since 2021 mean that on average, Americans are able to live almost as comfortably as they did before the pandemic sent prices spiraling.
But national and state-level polling over the past year indicates that many Americans are worried about household budgets and face sticker shock when they purchase basic goods and services.
While wages have increased on average, some consumers feel left behind. Credit card debt has ballooned as some families struggle to cover their economic bases. Increasingly, those who are still feeling the pain of inflation have turned their anger on political incumbents like President Joe Biden.
But are Marylanders who feel the pinch of high prices dissatisfied with the job that Gov. Wes Moore has done in office? The answer is more complicated than it might seem at first glance.
To understand how perceptions of the economy shape support for Moore, we examined a set of economic questions in the recent UMBC Poll, conducted by the UMBC Institute of Politics in late September. It asked Maryland residents whether they were concerned about five economic topics: recent stock market performance, a lack of good-paying jobs, housing affordability, the price of gasoline, and the price of other goods and services.
Overall, the governor remains popular, with roughly 54% of Marylanders voicing approval. But respondents who were “very concerned” about parts of the economy were far less supportive of Moore.
In some cases, “very concerned” respondents were only slightly more critical of Moore’s performance than others. For instance, people who were very concerned about the housing market had a Moore approval rate of 54%, around 8% lower than less concerned people. The same is true when comparing people with strong concerns about jobs (49% approval) with less concerned people (64% approval).
But other economic beliefs were associated with sharp declines in support for the governor. Among those very concerned about gas prices, only around 34% viewed Moore’s performance positively, and those very concerned about the price of goods and services had an overall Moore job approval rating of just 45%. At first glance, the data appear to show that respondents who feel the pinch of high prices are turning some of their anger toward the incumbent.
That may seem intuitive at first glance, but it ignores the well-known finding that political partisanship biases beliefs about the economy. In the case of Moore’s job approval, it seems likely that his political opponents are predisposed to believe the economy is worse. Partisanship may be harming Moore’s levels of support more than the prices paid by Marylanders at the pump and the grocery.
Comparing registered Republicans, Democrats and independents who said they were “very concerned” about the five economic beliefs measured by the UMBC Poll shows that while Republicans and Democrats have quite similar perceptions of several economic issues, they view the issue of prices very differently.
Republicans outpace Democrats in their concern for all five issues. But partisans’ perceptions do not meaningfully differ for jobs and unemployment, the stock market, and housing. It is perceptions of prices that show the starkest partisan differences.
While roughly 53% of Democrats in our sample said they were very concerned about the price of goods and services, a remarkable 87% of Republicans said the same thing. And while only around 29% of Democrats were very worried about the price of gas, around 73% of Republicans voiced strong concerns about prices they face at the pump.
It’s always possible that Republicans and Democrats perceive prices differently because they face real price differences in the areas where they live. But these perceptual differences are too large to be credible. After all, everyone in our poll resides in Maryland. Instead, it is likely that partisans’ economic beliefs are partly informed by the political environment.
Former President Donald Trump and Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance continue to campaign on a platform that identifies grocery and gas prices as key issues, while Vice President Kamala Harris has focused her campaign’s attention on other aspects of the economy like the housing supply. When it comes to Wes Moore’s job performance, then, economic beliefs may be less tied to the governor’s actions in office, and more to the ways that partisanship reshapes Marylanders’ perceptions of the real world.