(TNND) — Inflation-weary voters sent President Donald Trump to the White House. But new polling shows Trump has yet to make Americans feel better about the economy.
“The economy is always the No. 1 explainer of any election, and this one was no different,” said Todd Belt, the Political Management program director at George Washington University. “In our GW Politics Poll, we found the economy to be the No. 1 issue determining vote choice.”
A month into Trump’s new term, voters are still worried about the economy.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll published over the weekend showed just 32% approved of the job Trump was doing on inflation, even though 58% said inflation would be a major factor in deciding their future votes.
An update last week to the University of Michigan’s long-running consumer sentiment index showed Americans are worried that the tariffs championed by Trump will cause high inflation to come roaring back.
The Conference Board published its Consumer Confidence Index at the end of January. That index fell over five points from December, which itself fell several points from November.
And on Friday, Gallup published its updated Economic Confidence Index that showed Americans’ views of the economy “remains in solidly negative territory.”
Another Gallup report showed Trump’s job approval on the economy at 42%, though there were stark partisan differences in that survey. Ninety percent of Republicans in the Gallup poll approved of Trump’s handling of the economy, compared to 31% of independents and just 5% of Democrats.
Meanwhile, the new Reuters/Ipsos poll found a majority of Americans oppose some of Trump’s other key efforts, including Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, and the idea of the U.S. taking over the war-torn Gaza Strip.
The Pew Research Center, which found 63% of Americans view inflation as a very big problem for the country, also found most Americans disapprove of Trump’s executive order intended to end birthright citizenship.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll did find majority support for Trump’s efforts to deport more illegal immigrants.
The Pew Research Center also found support for Trump’s immigration crackdown.
But nothing topped inflation in swinging the outcome of the 2024 election.
The economy and jobs topped the list of most important issues facing the country, according to the AP VoteCast surveys during the election.
Among voters who said inflation was the single most important factor in their vote, nearly two-thirds went for Trump, according to AP VoteCast.
Belt said voters didn’t think former President Joe Biden was concerned about inflation.
Based on the current polls, voters might not think Trump is focused enough on inflation either.
“People expect the president to be able to do things overnight, and the president just can’t do that,” Belt said. “And there have been a number of things that the president has talked about that has sent some shocks through the economy. If you’re going to deport all the people who are responsible for picking, processing and packaging all of our food, that’s not going to be helpful for the price of food. If you are going to threaten tariffs on our biggest trading partners, that’s going to create uncertainty in the market, which causes price spikes.”
Scott Hoyt, Moody’s Analytics senior director, previously told The National News Desk that restrictions on immigration and new tariffs would be drags on economic growth.
“Fewer people coming into the country means both fewer consumers buying things and fewer workers available to produce goods and services,” Hoyt said via email. “Tariffs are passed through to buyers at least in part, raising prices and decreasing demand for the impacted goods.”
The consumer price index, a popular measure of inflation, peaked at 9.1% in June 2022.
The CPI is now 3%, but progress on cooling inflation has stalled.
If that doesn’t improve for consumers, Belt said voters might punish Republicans in the midterm elections.
The sitting president’s party has lost House seats in each midterm going back to 2006. Republicans lost 40 House seats during the 2018 midterm, during Trump’s first stint in the White House.
And while it might be members of Congress with their jobs on the line, Belt said Trump will shoulder the blame.
“Presidents absolutely get too much blame and too much credit when it comes to the economy,” Belt said. “There’s no button on the Oval Office desk that can control prices of any sort of commodity, be it groceries or oil prices or anything like that.”