The “Bad Vibes” Economy
Copyright © 2024 Change Research, a Public Benefit Corporation
Why & How
Change Research polled 1,534 registered voters nationwide from February 6-8, 2024
Respondents were recruited via targeted online advertisements on websites and social media platforms, and using SMS text-to-web.
Post stratification was done on gender, age, race, education, region, and 2020 vote.
The modeled margin of error is +/- 2.56%.
Disentangle bad trends from bad vibes
Assess voters’ economic priorities and perceptions of which parties value those priorities.
Guidance to connect with — instead of alienate — everyday voters.
This deck offers guidance on how to contextualize, interpret, and respond to voters’ economic anxieties and priorities ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
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Table of Contents
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53% Women
45% Men
2% Trans/non-binary
24% 18-34
23% 35-49
28% 50-64
25% 65+
42% Democrat
44% Republican
14% Independent
72% White
12% Hispanic
10% Black
2% AAPI
4% Other
Sample Overview
14% High-School or Less
31% Some College/No Degree
14% Associate’s Degree
25% Bachelor’s Degree
17% Graduate Degree
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Pew Top Issues, 2004-2020
“The Economy” is always a top concern in presidential election issue polling.
2004 2008 2012 2016 2020
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Part 1: Trends vs Vibes
Actual pain points
The role of partisanship & immigration attitudes
Trends vs. Vibes
Distinguishing and examining
Vibes defined as people expressing negativity about “the economy” less grounded in facts:
Trends defined as people expressing some form of personal financial hardship, such as:
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Key Findings on Vibes vs Trends
The answer to whether negativity on the economy is due to bad vibes or bad trends is: “yes.”
We should not underestimate the financial struggles that many voters are experiencing today, nor should we forget that even some of the “vibes” negativity can be partly rooted in real struggle.
At the same time, predispositions such as partisanship and attitudes towards immigrants exert heavy influence on how people perceive the state of our economy today:
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Trends
Financial Hardship
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Personal Financial Situation Today
EXCELLENT/GOOD NOT SO GOOD/POOR
53 47
68 32
43 57
49 51
48 52
46 54
54 46
63 37
47% of voters rate their personal financial situation as either “not so good” or “poor.”
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Personal Financial Situation Today
EXCELLENT/GOOD NOT SO GOOD/POOR
53 47
68 32
43 57
49 51
48 52
46 54
54 46
63 37
47% of voters rate their personal financial situation as either “not so good” or “poor.”
Young people report more financial woes than older people. 52% of 18-34s say “not so good” or “poor.” The majority of voters 50+ say their situation is “excellent” or “good.”
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Young people report higher rate of financial hardships than older people.
By an almost 2:1 margin, Trump 2024 and Undecided/3rd Party-curious voters express more difficulty finding work than Biden 2024 voters.
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Young people report higher rate of financial hardships than older people.
By an almost 2:1 margin, Trump 2024 and Undecided/3rd Party-curious voters express more difficulty finding work than Biden 2024 voters.
Young people are the group reporting the most difficulty with finding work, having to reduce hours at work, and being laid off from work than older counterparts.
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Spotlight: Youth Voters Poll conducted in August 2023
We dug in on these trends in a prior survey from 2023 of Gen Z and young millennial voters, where we found that young voters are experiencing significant economic stress
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Most young voters believe that the American Dream is not possible to achieve
61% of young voters say they spend over the recommended 30% on rent, and 28% spend at least half of their income on rent.
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Young voters report being stretched thin by housing costs, limiting their spending in other places
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Majorities of young voters do not feel confident that they will be able to retire, own a home, or live beyond paycheck to paycheck
Vibes
Partisanship and Anti-Immigrant Beliefs
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Partisanship colors perceptions about “the economy.”
On average, Biden 2024 voters rate “the economy” somewhat better than they rate their personal financial situation.
On average, Trump voters and undecided/3rd party-curious voters rate “the economy” drastically worse than they rate their personal financial situation.
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Illegal immigration and border security is the top issue, including among people experiencing economic hardship (lost job, reduced hours, and/or struggled to find work in the last year).
Inflation and the rising costs of goods ranks second.
Job opportunities ranks last.
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Concerns about illegal immigration are driven by Trump 2024 voters. This is not the singular concern–or even a concern at all– for other voters.
Undecided/3rd party-curious voters are more attuned to inflation & rising cost of goods and high cost of housing. Immigration is the third most common selection for this group, ~ tied with government corruption.
Biden voters gravitate towards abortion restrictions/bans, gun violence, and climate change.
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Biden 2024 voters gravitate towards wealth inequality, as well as high cost of healthcare & housing and corporate price gouging.
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Undecided/3rd Party-curious 2024 voters gravitate towards high cost of everyday goods like gas and groceries, healthcare & housing. They also gravitate towards wealth inequality.
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Trump 2024 voters gravitate towards high cost of everyday goods like gas and groceries, funding overseas wars instead of domestic priorities, the national debt, and too many people getting handouts.
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Perceived Beneficiaries of Government Programs
Undocumented immigrants are the most common perceived beneficiaries of government social services. This is driven by Trump voters, but is also the second-most common selection among undecided/3rd party curious 2024 voters.
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Perceived Beneficiaries of Government Programs
Racial minorities are another commonly selected group. This, too, is driven by Trump voters.
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National Debt Concerns
Demonstrably high concern about the national debt, driven by Trump 2024 voters.
We used a regression analysis to explore what factors most strongly predict concerns about the national debt.
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National Debt Concerns
The model controls for various demographics:
Assesses impact of economy health rating (excellent, good, not so good, poor) on concern about national debt
Assesses the impacts of two important symbolic attitudes:
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The most powerful predictor of concern about the national debt is anti-immigrant beliefs.
The model controls for various demographics:
Assesses impact of economy health rating (excellent, good, not so good, poor) on concern about national debt
Assesses the impacts of two important symbolic attitudes:
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Takeaways on Vibes vs Trends
The answer to whether negativity on the economy is due to bad vibes or bad trends is: “yes.”
We should not underestimate the financial struggles that many voters are experiencing today, nor should we forget that even some of the “vibes” negativity can be partly rooted in real struggle.
At the same time, predispositions such as partisanship and attitudes towards immigrants exert heavy influence on how people perceive the state of our economy today:
Rebutting those feelings with facts about macroeconomic improvements will not work.
We’ll share communication guidance at the end of the presentation
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Part 2: Economic Priorities and Perceptions of the Parties
Exposing the gap between desired priorities and perceived priorities
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What Should Gov’t Prioritize?
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What Should Gov’t Prioritize?
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Note the gap between so-called “earned” versus “unearned” benefits.
Prior research shows this is largely driven by perceptions of who benefits from social safety net programs (namely, racial minorities).
What Should Gov’t Prioritize?
universal priorities are government benefits such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and infrastructure
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What Should Gov’t Prioritize?
universal priorities are government benefits such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid + infrastructure
Biden voters’ priorities AND undecided/3rd party-curious voters’ priorities also include healthcare, the environment, K-12 education, and affordable housing.
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What Should Gov’t Prioritize?
universal priorities are government benefits such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid + infrastructure
Biden voters’ priorities AND undecided/3rd party-curious voters’ priorities also include healthcare, the environment, K-12 education, and affordable housing.
Trump voters are fixated on border security, the military, and law enforcement.
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What Should Gov’t Prioritize? Audience Spotlights
TOP SELECTIONS: Young voters and undecided/3rd party-curious voters share some of the priorities from the overall sample: government benefits such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, and infrastructure. An even greater share of these voters choose healthcare as a top priority, compared to the overall sample, and they prioritize K-12 education funding much more highly.
OTHER PRIORITIES: These groups gravitate to funding for the environment and affordable housing more commonly than overall sample.
LOW PRIORITIES: Far fewer young voters and undecided/3rd party-curious voters prioritize security-related funding.
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Perceived Democratic Priorities
60% of voters perceive Dems prioritize the less popular entitlement programs. 47% perceive they prioritize the popular entitlements.
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Perceived Democratic Priorities
most unpopular funding target in the survey
60% of voters perceive Dems prioritize the less popular entitlement programs. 47% perceive they prioritize the popular entitlements.
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Perceived Democratic Priorities
most unpopular funding target in the survey
60% of voters perceive Dems prioritize the less popular entitlement programs. 47% perceive they prioritize the popular entitlements.
Outside of popular entitlement programs, Democrats earn middling to poor marks when it comes to prioritizing other family issues – healthcare, housing, childcare, education.
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Priorities Summary
Democrats are perceived well on one of the four main areas voters identify as priorities: government benefits.
Republicans are also perceived well on one important domain for voters: border security.
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Priorities Summary
Voters don’t perceive that either party is ultra-focused on funding their other two primary priorities: healthcare and infrastructure, though Democrats score better than Republicans on prioritizing healthcare.
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Priorities Summary
Democrats are perceived as prioritizing a few areas that fall outside the top four priorities voters identified: the environment, the other category of government entitlement programs, and aid to foreign countries.
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Priorities Summary
Republicans are perceived as fixated on funding security - for the border, for the military, and for law enforcement.
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Priorities Summary
Republicans are perceived as fixated on funding security - for the border, for the military, and for law enforcement.
Voters don’t perceive Republicans prioritize any of the family issues we tested – healthcare, childcare, education, housing affordability.
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Perceptions of the Parties
Economic strengths & weaknesses
DEMOCRATIC STRENGTHS: Net advantages on two economic domains: protecting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid (+14) and making the economy fairer for working people (+2).
REPUBLICAN WEAKNESSES: perceived as caring more about the very rich than the middle class, and caring more about corporate and wealthy donors than about regular people.
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Perceptions of the Parties
Undecided/3rd Party-curious voters
Democrats retain the same strengths and Republicans have the same weaknesses.
But, a plurality or a majority of these voters punt on the questions of who does a better job, or who the statements better describe and ascribe equal blame to both parties.
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Part 3: Diagnosing What Ails The Economy
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We explored this phenomenon by asking respondents to diagnose what, primarily, ails the economy today. We offered three thematic options to see what respondents would gravitate towards:
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Diagnosing What Ails The Economy
Overall, voters believe we give away too much foreign aid and we are plagued by systemic wealth inequality and corporate greed. Disentangling by partisanship…
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Problem Statements
Trump vs. Biden Voters
Biden 2024 voters diagnose our main economic problems to be systemic wealth inequality, particularly for how it impacts the next generation’s ability to live out the American Dream.
Trump 2024 voters diagnose the problems in our economy through a partisan and America First lens: we give away too much foreign aid at the expense of caring for our own, and Biden has shown poor leadership and decision-making.
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Problem Statements
Undecided/3rd Party-curious voters
Undecided/3rd Party-curious 2024 voters gravitate towards systemic wealth inequality, though less strongly than Biden 2024 voters.
Voters who backed Biden in 2020 but today say they’re undecided or 3rd party-curious more closely resemble Biden voters. Notably, they do not blame Biden when diagnosing our main economic problems.
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Takeaways
Economic Priorities, Strengths, & Weaknesses
Perception of the Republican Party
Trump voters perceive:
Perception of the Democratic Party
Biden voters & und/3rd party-curious voters perceive:
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Spotlight: open-ended answers from research we conducted in late 2023
During Voices in-depth interviews with blue collar voters in swing states, we asked them to describe what a “healthy” economy means to them.
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How would you define a “healthy” economy?
Regular people can provide for their families | Stability and opportunity for the middle class | Prosperity doesn’t concentrate at the top |
“I think a healthy economy is where enough people are working that want to work, enough people have enough money to live in America on a middle class paycheck. There are enough rules and regulations to keep the rich from getting out of control. So, a healthy economy is an American who can live in America comfortably and raise their family, that's what we need.” | ||
“Look, what I would consider a healthy economy is an economy that has an abundance of good paying jobs, that's producing quality products, that people can afford to live and raise a family without having to struggle and rack of a bunch of debt, and an economy where companies can prosper comfortably.” | “Super wealthy…they need to be brought back down to earth a little bit… you guys have gotten out of control and there's hundreds of thousands of people that are underpaid because you're so overpaid. I think it needs to be a little more balanced.” | |
“Where people have good paying jobs and are able to buy homes and provide for their families.” “Good economic growth. I mean people working and being able to afford stuff and take care of their families.” | “I would like to see more of a middle class either established or returned. I think that was the major benchmark at least in my mind of a healthy economy. I think the three classes wasn't perfect way to go but it felt like everybody had a better shot and everybody was doing better.” | “I think a healthy economy is when not just one particular group of people or a level of income are doing well.” “Helping even just the homeless folks, if we could get them off the streets and put them to work would help create more income and more taxes and more flow. If you start from the bottom it always comes back up. You can't start at the top. It's never going to flow back down.” |
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Spotlight: open-ended answers from research we conducted earlier this year
During Voices text-based chats with young voters (18-35), we asked them what kinds of problems our politicians should be trying to solve, and what solutions they hope to see
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They want leaders to prioritize and create economic stability for regular people
“Find ways to make upcoming generations as economically stable as they were. Make it so we can buy a house and have a family again. Make it so that maybe we can retire one day.”
“Increasing workforce participation by enabling more people to work- subsidized childcare, paid family leave, require workplace flexibility, paid sick days, protection and requirement for part time work. This would increase funding to social security, increase economic growth, increase population (more kids if people can afford it). Childcare is the biggest investment the government doesn't make”
“Our economy, for one. Sure the stock market might be thriving, but if your average minimum wage employee can't buy groceries and afford rent without relying on governmental assistance, then there's something wrong with that picture. If your average middle income family can't afford groceries, a mortgage, and vehicle payments, and has to rely on 30% interest credit cards to get by, there's something wrong…with that picture. When you have a flood of people walking to a warming shelter every night, there is something wrong with that picture. Lie to me and tell me the economy isn't in a depression right now, okay, maybe not, but everybody sure is depressed. Capitalism is failing us because we have some people that have enough money that they could house, clothes, and feed a third world country for a decade just on dividends, but for every one of those people you have 1,000,000 poor that don't know if they're going to be able to feed, clothe, or house their children. We have a third world country within a country of so much wealth. Tell me how capitalism benefits those people that might freeze to death tonight?”
Some talk about inflation and the debt, but most ground their economic concerns in family-oriented policies, a fairer system, and a middle class stability and prosperity.
How would you define a “healthy” economy?
Control national debt | No handouts to the undeserving | Limit foreign aid |
“No unemployment. Reasonable to low interest rates, stock market making steady gains, our national debts shrinking instead of growing.” | “It seems like everybody's got their hand out right now that they make things too easy for people to not work.” “I mean, where I live we never really had homeless on the corner. And… now we're starting to have a lot of that, but a lot of it I know was just people who are pretending that they're homeless and stuff because they don't want to work.” | “Why is stuff so expensive? They need to help the American people out and they're sending all this money to everywhere else, but they're not helping us.” |
“Stop spending more money than we have, how about start there. We're just going so far in debt. I feel sorry for not just children, my grandchildren. They're inheriting all this nonsense that we're spending out of control.” | “Right now I know there's jobs for everybody, but not everybody's working. Yeah, now it's like there's too many depending on social services to maintain their living status and that's not right. My husband and I, yes we had to depend on it when the job market was very unstable. But there's more people out there on social services that can work that don't work, that need to work.” | “If America would keep the money here instead of…putting all that foreign aid out.” |
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Part 4: Communication Guidance
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Communication Guidance
#1: We absolutely cannot rebut negative feelings about the economy with positive facts about the economy, because:
“The economy” is about more than the economy…
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Communication Guidance
#1: We absolutely cannot rebut negative feelings about the economy with positive facts about the economy, because:
“The economy” is about more than the economy…and always is
We have been here before.
Prior research shows that biases and attitudes can color perception of the economy. Recall that commentary abounded during and after the 2016 election about racism versus economic anxiety as a driver of the Trump vote, and the large body of research that emerged from that election showed that racial resentment drove economic anxiety, not the other way around. This research doesn’t provide evidence of which drives which, but we do find evidence that anti-immigrant beliefs and economic anxiety are extremely interrelated.
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Communication Guidance
#1: We absolutely cannot rebut negative feelings about the economy with positive facts about the economy, because:
Dismissing real pain points as baseless negativity will backfire.
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Communication Guidance
#2: To communicate effectively on this issue, do not criticize voters; take aim at people in power who exploit our differences for their own gain, and narrate their strategy.
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Accusing voters of racism and xenophobia is a bad strategy, for two reasons.
Secret Handshake vs Used Car Fraud. Often, GOP messaging is meant to whip up fear and resentment with voters while hiding from them that the appeal of the message is rooted ins socially unacceptable stereotypes.
In the post-Obama era, sometimes the intended audience is…progressives. They deliberately provoke our outrage to hijack the conversation. Don’t play into their hands.
Instead, narrate why certain elected officials want to divide us in order to distract us from their unwillingness to address wealth inequality and invest in making our communities more prosperous.
Communication Guidance
#3: In communicating an economic vision, Democrats should ground “the economy” in concrete family-oriented policies and communicate how they will safeguard voters’ economic well-being.
DO ground “the economy” by talking about specific policies that Democrats champion in order to persuade these voters that the Democratic Party shares their priorities and fights for them
DON’T talk about “the economy” without defining it through policies voters understand. With this approach, “the economy” is a vague web of markets, profits, debts, and losses that is rife for projection and negativity.
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What Do We Recommend Next?
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Our poll showed a lot of overlap; the next challenge is trying to distinguish these audiences to enable targeted messaging. We plan to use Magnify, our AI targeting tool, to create custom models of these two groups.
We know the principles of effective messaging:
We want to apply this framework to developing of-the-moment messaging about the role immigration is playing in the election, using a combination of polling, experimental survey design, and qualitative data (Voices Chats and/or In-Depth-Interviews).
Interested in developing/using this kind of model or message guidance?
Reach out to us! We’d love to partner.
POLLING for the PEOPLE
Stephen Clermont
Director of Polling
stephen@changeresearch.com
Lauren Goldstein, PhD
Lead Pollster, Advocacy
lauren@changeresearch.com
Ben Sullivan
Analyst
bensullivan@changeresearch.com
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