"How inflation shaped voting."
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Russ Roberts (https://trendsingeopolitics.blogspot.com).
 November 8, 2024 |
 | By German Lopez |
Good morning. We’re covering inflation’s role in Trump’s win — as well as tax cuts, abortion rights and Pompeii.
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| Voting in Kansas. Charlie Riedel/Associated Press |
The inflation election
Why did Donald Trump defeat Kamala Harris? One answer was clear even before Election Day: Voters consistently said the economy was their top issue, driven primarily by concerns about inflation. And they trusted Trump more than Harris to handle it. “It’s the economy, stupid” is an old cliché in American politics, and it often proves true.
Still, Trump’s achievement contained a mystery. On paper, the economy seems OK. Inflation is down recently. Wages are up. But anger persists. That’s because higher prices cause a special kind of pain — one that lingers and, historically, leads voters to punish the people in charge. Tuesday was no exception.
Today’s newsletter explains why voters still blamed the Biden-Harris administration — and why America’s leaders are far from alone in feeling the public’s fury over inflation this year.
Pocketbook pain
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| Source: National Consumer Price Index statistics for each country | By The New York Times |
Why does inflation anger voters so much? Some economic problems, like high unemployment, affect only a minority of the population. But higher prices affect everyone.
Inflation also taps into what psychologists call “loss aversion”: People feel negatively about losses much more than they feel positively about gains. So although wages have kept up with inflation or surpassed it, people still feel more pained by sticker shock at the grocery store than elated by their gains.
To make matters worse, consumers can’t do much about inflation. They simply have to cut back their spending on certain things or work more hours to afford them. The sense of loss combined with a feeling of powerlessness leaves people furious. They expect their leaders to fix the problem.
Inflation fell to normal levels over the past year, but high prices remain. Eggs still cost nearly triple what they did four years ago. When people imagine an ideal end to inflation, they think of prices returning to normal. That hasn’t happened, and economists don’t expect it will. When the polling firm Morning Consult surveyed U.S. voters about inflation, they were comparing prices with those from 2020. They blamed President Biden and Harris for the increases since then, fairly or not.
“Americans were comparing this economy to one without inflation, whether or not that was a realistic option according to economists,” said my colleague Ben Casselman, who covers the U.S. economy. “They weren’t saying, ‘Inflation is tough, but at least I have a job thanks to Biden.’ They were saying, ‘Of course I have a job, but now I have to deal with all this inflation thanks to Biden.’”
At the same time, the solutions to inflation can make the problem feel worse in the short term. To stop price increases, central banks raised interest rates. That made loans, credit card payments and mortgages more expensive — another set of higher costs that consumers had to deal with.
Global rage
The same dynamic is haunting leaders all over the world. Over the past few years, voters have thrown out incumbents, on the left and the right, in Britain, France, the Netherlands, Argentina, Italy and Australia. The top political parties in South Africa, Japan and India also faced disappointing elections. Canada’s and Germany’s incumbents are in danger of losing their jobs next year.
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| Source: Morning Consult | By The New York Times |
Higher prices are the central reason. In the aftermath of the Covid pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, prices spiked worldwide.
There is some good news for world leaders: Most prices have stabilized as the shocks of the pandemic and Russia’s war have subsided. If that trend continues, voters’ anger will likely ease.
There are already some signs of that growing optimism. The Federal Reserve, America’s central bank, cut interest rates yesterday, signaling that inflation will continue falling. The University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index, which measures people’s faith in the economy and their finances, has improved over the past year. The improvement, however, was too little and too late for Harris’s presidential campaign.
More on Trump’s win
- Trump looks set to win the national popular vote, which would make him the first Republican presidential candidate to do so in 20 years.
- See the voting groups that swung to the right.
- Trump won votes from Arab Americans and conservative pro-Israel Jews, groups with very different views.
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House results
- Republicans are seven seats away from a House majority and appear to be poised to achieve that. Twenty-five races have not been called. Track the results.
- Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a House Democrat who’s criticized her party for condescending to working-class voters, won re-election in a red district. She spoke with The Times about how her party should change.
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California
- London Breed, San Francisco’s first Black female mayor, lost to Daniel Lurie, an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune who pledged to improve public safety and city services. Both are Democrats.
- Gov. Gavin Newsom called California’s legislature back for a special session to pass protections for civil liberties, reproductive rights and climate action “in the face of an incoming Trump administration.”
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The transition
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| Susie Wiles and Donald Trump. Doug Mills/The New York Times |
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Other election news
- Abortion rights were more popular than Harris. In states like Arizona and Nevada, some voters split their tickets, supporting both abortion rights measures and Trump.
- After the election, a wave of racist text messages summoning Black people to report for slavery appeared on phones across the U.S. The F.B.I. is investigating.
- In 2016, shocked liberals reacted to Trump’s victory by organizing. This time, there is more resignation. “My feed feels like a funeral,” one woman said.
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THE LATEST NEWS
International
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Other Big Stories
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| A rhesus macaque. Kathleen Flynn/Reuters |
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Opinions
If Trump’s opponents focus their criticism only on Trump, they will alienate millions of Americans. They should focus on defending the vulnerable, David French writes.
Democratic voters who follow every news update are arrogant in assuming everyone else does, too. That blind spot cost them the election, Frank Bruni argues.
People who voted for both abortion rights and Trump may support some women’s rights but not full gender equality, Jill Filipovic writes.
MORNING READS
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| Thomas Prior for The New York Times |
A giant puppet: The secret to happiness in Santa Fe, N.M.? The annual burning of a 50-foot effigy.
Fields, not freezers: Some in Minnesota love the challenge of hunting turkeys — and the cooking that follows.
Ultraprocessed foods: A scientific committee says there’s not enough evidence to avoid them. Some experts disagree.
Literary guide: Read your way through Shanghai.
Lives Lived: Eikoh Hosoe was an avant-garde photographer who helped pioneer a new kind of art making in postwar Japan. His surreal, often erotically charged images explored life, death and the nuclear age. He died at 91.
SPORTS
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| Rachael Gunn at the Paris Olympics Chang W. Lee/The New York Times |
Olympics: The Australian breaker Rachael “Raygun” Gunn is retiring from competition, citing the “upsetting” backlash to her Olympic performance this summer.
N.F.L.: The Baltimore Ravens beat the Cincinnati Bengals in a 35-34 thriller.
ARTS AND IDEAS
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| In Berlin. Christoph Soeder/DPA, via Associated Press |
If you haven’t made plans for Thanksgiving yet, you could consider an unusual option: going abroad.
November can be one of the most affordable months for foreign travel. And Thanksgiving week, when domestic flights skyrocket, is a golden window for last-minute international flights. Read more about the deals.
More on culture
- Elwood Edwards, an announcer who voiced the email alert “You’ve got mail!” on AOL, died at 74.
- Late-night hosts joked about Biden’s speech to the country.
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THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …
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| Craig Lee for The New York Times |
Make a big pot of old-fashioned beef stew, one of our most-reviewed recipes.
Wash your clothes by hand — even ones labeled “dry clean only.”
Shave with a better electric razor.
Try a deep fryer.
Print photos instantly.
Take our news quiz.
GAMES
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Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was chateaux.
And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands.
Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. —German
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