US Voters in a Sour Economic Mood Heading Into the Midterms, Reuters Finds — Prices, Tariffs and the Cost of Everyday Life on Election Eve
The jobs numbers are strong and growth just posted its best quarter of the year. Voters, Reuters reports on Election Eve, are grumpy anyway — and in New Jersey, where affordability already leads the congressional file, that mood is the race.
On the eve of the elections that will decide whether President Donald Trump's Republican Party keeps control of Congress, the country's economic mood and its economic numbers are telling two different stories, Reuters reports. Voters' minds are on the economy, with high and rising prices a key issue, and many blaming the president's policies — specifically tariffs and the Iran war — for the nagging inflation they feel when they fill a gas tank, pay a utility bill or order a meal. Trump is not on the ballot on November 3, Reuters notes, but voters have his economic record in mind as they head to the polls, and the prevailing vibe is skeptical, if not downright grumpy.
The numbers underneath the mood are, on their face, strong. The unemployment rate stood at 4.2 percent in September and has measured no higher than 4.5 percent for five straight years — the longest such stretch on record — while weekly unemployment insurance claims sit near a 57-year low, more people than ever are employed, and data last week showed the economy grew at a 3.4 percent annualized pace last quarter, its strongest performance this year. The surveys split the difference between the two stories: the Conference Board's confidence measure perked up in October, while the University of Michigan's consumer sentiment index registered a near-record low — a gap Annex Wealth Management's Brian Jacobsen explained to Reuters by noting that the confidence index tracks the macroeconomy while the sentiment index asks people how they themselves are doing financially.
For New Jersey, none of this is abstract. This station's own published file from Fairleigh Dickinson University's poll found state Democrats leading Republicans 55 to 32 for Congress with affordability — not any other issue — driving the choice, the state-level version of the national mood Reuters describes on Election Eve. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, quoted by Reuters from CNBC last week, argued that consumer behavior itself remains quite strong whatever the surveys say. Which of those readings — the strong ledger or the sour mood — governs Tuesday's turnout and Tuesday's margins is now a question for the voters, and polls across New Jersey open at 6 a.m. to begin answering it.
