WASHINGTON (Dispatches) - More than three-quarters of Americans (77 percent) say inflation is affecting their lives as the holiday season begins, according to a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll — and a clear majority (57 percent) blame President Biden.
The survey of 1,696 U.S. adults, which was conducted from Nov. 17 to 19, also found that more of them selected inflation as the “most important issue facing America” (17 percent) than any other issue, including COVID-19 (15 percent), which continues to kill more than 1,100 Americans each day, on average.
And just 18 percent say Biden is doing enough to address it.
These results explain in part why the president’s overall approval rating has steadily declined to 43 percent in recent months while his disapproval rating has risen to 52 percent — and why, on the economy, Biden’s approval rating is even lower (40 percent).
Since last October, overall prices have soared 6.2 percent amid supply-chain bottlenecks and sky-high demand for goods — the fastest yearly pace in more than three decades.
In a speech Tuesday, the president announced he was releasing 50 million barrels of oil from the nation’s strategic petroleum reserve to help lower gas prices.
“We’ve made historic progress over the last 10 months,” Biden said, pointing to the 5.6 million jobs added to the economy since he took office in January. But “disruptions related to the pandemic have caused challenges in our supply chain, which have sparked concern about shortages and contributed to higher prices.”
He also vowed to continue “taking action.”
“The fact is, we always get through those spikes. We’re going to get through this one, and hopefully faster,” Biden said. “But it doesn’t mean we should just stand by idly and wait for prices to drop on their own.”
The president has his work cut out for him. Like COVID, and unlike more favorable economic indicators such as quarterly GDP growth and monthly improvements in the unemployment rate, inflation is the kind of day-to-day problem that every American experiences firsthand. So are rising gas prices and shortages of goods and services, which another 4 percent and 7 percent of Americans, respectively, named as the biggest problems facing the country right now.