Twenty-five days before the midterm elections, the country’s mood is souring — and the voters drifting fastest are the ones neither party can afford to lose.
The University of Michigan’s preliminary October consumer sentiment index fell to 46.3, down 1.8 points from September and below what economists expected. Beneath the headline, the split was revealing: sentiment actually improved among both Democrats and Republicans this month, according to the survey’s director, but a sharp decline among independents dragged the overall reading to a five-month low.
The details explain why. The survey’s gauge of current conditions sank to 44.7 — the lowest on record, lower than at the depths of the pandemic or the financial crisis — as households reported that high prices and borrowing costs are gutting their willingness to buy big-ticket items. The average 30-year mortgage rate climbed to 7.4 percent this week, a three-year high. Year-ahead inflation expectations ticked up to 4.7 percent.
The pain is not evenly shared. Sentiment fell steepest among lower-income consumers and those with smaller stock portfolios — households with the least cushion against the price increases driven in part by the war with Iran and the energy shock travelling through the economy.
Strategists in both parties know the pattern by heart: when voters say conditions are worse than during a pandemic, the incumbent party pays. Expectations for the future did edge up for the first time since July, a thread of hope for the White House. But campaigns are not run on expectations. They are run on how people feel at the checkout — and right now, independents are telling pollsters they feel worse than they have all year.
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