Of the many possible explanations for former US President Donald Trump’s stunning return to the White House, one towers above all others: the cost of living.
In exit polls, 45 percent of voters said they were worse off than four years ago, when President Joe Biden took office, versus just 24 percent who said their financial situation had improved.
Voters who named inflation as their number one concern broke for Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris by a factor of nearly two to one, according to an Associated Press VoteCast survey of more than 120,000 voters nationwide.
At first glance, the official statistics do not appear to support such a dour economic mood in the US.
Inflation currently stands at 2.4 percent, well below the historical average and not far off the US Federal Reserve’s target of about 2 percent. That’s down from a peak of 9.1 percent in June 2022 amid the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic.
At the same time, wages have been growing faster than prices since at least the middle of 2023.
So if inflation has been brought under control under Biden and Harris, why did Americans reject their administration so decisively at the ballot box?
The likely answer lies in the lag between the present rosy economic conditions and the impact on people’s wallets.
Although measuring whether people are better or worse off is difficult due to differing individual circumstances and the myriad ways to parse the data, there is clear evidence that Americans have less to spend compared to when the Biden-Harris administration took power.
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