WASHINGTON – Far more Minnesotans are concerned about inflation and the rising cost of living than the possibility of a woman’s right to abortion being taken away, according to a new MinnPost/Embold Research poll.
That’s bad news for President Joe Biden and other Democrats who are running on abortion rights and good news for Republicans who are blaming Biden for the post-pandemic runup in inflation.
The poll also showed that 80% of Minnesotans said “things in this country” are “on the wrong track,” with women and older Americans slightly more optimistic in the direction of the nation than men and younger Minnesotans.
Embold Research pollster Ben Greenfield said other polls show a growing negativity about the direction of the country.
“Republicans almost all felt negative in our 2022 MinnPost survey, and they continue to; what has changed is that only 40% of Democrats now feel the country is headed in the right direction, down from 56% last year,” Greenfield said.
The growth in Democratic dissatisfaction, Greenfield said, was “a sense that some of the key problems facing the country are not being solved” and “a growing feeling that Joe Biden is not up to the challenge of solving these problems.”
The poll also indicates respondents are more positive when asked about the direction Minnesota is going. Forty-eight percent said the state is going in “the right direction,” while 52% said the state is going in “the wrong direction.”
Views about how Minnesota is faring were strongly determined by a poll respondent’s political party affiliation. Ninety percent of state Democrats polled said the state is going in the right direction while 94% of those who identified as Republicans said Minnesota is going in the wrong direction.
A problem for Biden and the DFL is that 63% of Minnesotans who said they are independent and not affiliated with a political party said the state is going in the wrong direction.
Still, as a whole, respondents believe the nation is worse off than Minnesota.
For instance, the national unemployment rate was 3.9%, and Minnesota’s was 3.2% in October. And inflation was 3.2% across the nation and 2.9% in Minnesota and other Midwestern states in October, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics.
Minnesotans say their income is falling behind
While inflation is cooling, Minnesotans said rising prices are top of mind.
When asked what issues were of highest priority, 60% of poll respondents cited the rising cost of groceries and gas and 40% said it was the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade and the possibility state governments would ban abortion.
The respondents were asked to pick four issues that were high priorities. After the rising cost of groceries and gas and the Supreme Court’s abortion decision, Minnesotans cited taxes (39%), immigration (39%), the cost of housing (36%), gun violence (34%), violent crime (31%) and violence by political extremists and insurrectionists (31%), as top concerns.
The other top priorities were election security and voter fraud (29%), gun rights (28%) extreme weather events and climate change (27%), teaching LGTBQ issues in public schools (23%), China taking U.S. jobs (15%), and the cost of childcare (12%).
At the bottom of the list, only 10% of the poll’s respondents said a lack of good jobs in their community is a top concern.
A MinnPost/Embold Research poll conducted in October of 2022 found similar results. Sixty-one percent of the respondents cited inflation as their top priority and 43% cited access to abortion services.
Despite the strong jobs market and other indicators of a healthy economy, the economy and inflation have also been cited as top concerns in national polls.
Johnson said the same thing that has led to higher wages and robust employment – massive government spending during the pandemic under both the Trump and Biden administrations – has fueled inflation.
“What we decided to do in the pandemic was put money in people’s pockets,” Johnston said. “That created inflation, but it also created jobs.”
The MinnPost/Embold Research poll also found rural Minnesotans (65%) were likely to say inflation is a top concern than suburban (59%) and urban Minnesotans (56%). In the 2022 poll, 50% of urban Minnesotans said inflation was a concern.
Johnston said that’s because rural residents drive more and are more likely to use more petroleum-based energy on farms and their businesses.
“The more energy intensive the area of the economy is, the more inflation is going to bite you,” he said.
By a large majority, 72%, poll respondents said their income is falling behind the cost of living, 22% said it was staying even with the cost of living and only 3% said it exceeded the cost of living. There was no change from the 2022 poll on that question.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, prices did climb much higher than wages from March 2021 until February of this year. But wages began to climb steeply in February 2022 and caught up to the speed prices were rising a year later.
Johnston said many Americans, including those living in Minnesota, don’t consider raises or other boosts in income when they experience sticker shock. Nor are they mollified by the fact inflation is abating and nearing the annual 2% rate sought by the Federal Reserve.
“People don’t care about the speed that prices are going up,” he said. “People compare what something cost last year with what it costs this year.”
The MinnPost/Embold Research poll surveyed 1,519 likely Minnesota voters from Nov. 14 to Nov. 17. Its margin of error was +/- 2.6 percentage points.
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