Messaging on Inflation Should Stress Policy Solutions, Record Corporate Profits
By Rakeen Mabud and Ethan Winter
Data for Progress conducted a survey of 1,258 likely voters from December 7-11, 2021, to determine the most effective messaging on inflation and test attitudes toward the state of the economy more broadly.
Poll after poll shows voters are extremely concerned about inflation, and likely voters now see it as the most important economic problem facing the country. But there is an opportunity to shift the narrative on inflation and the economy more broadly. These findings offer a messaging framework for lawmakers and activists to acknowledge the stress that rising prices are having on families while tackling the root causes of inflation: corporate power and decades of underinvestment.
Most Effective Messages on Inflation
Inflation is a significant threat to voters' assessments of whether or not the economy is doing well. Likely voters have a negative assessment of both current economic conditions and their own personal finances. On the topic of inflation, the Republican Party is more trusted than the Democratic Party.
Our survey shows that the most effective messages on inflation emphasize policy solutions that tackle inflation concerns head on and tie elements of the Biden agenda to those solutions, rather than attempt to redirect likely voters to other issue areas.
Below are the top performing messages on inflation:
President Biden says that we need to bring back manufacturing jobs in the United States to drive down prices. Our supply chains need to be housed here at home, rather than outsourced abroad.
President Biden and Republicans passed a bipartisan deal to invest in America's infrastructure. Biden says this will strengthen our supply chains, helping goods get to market, and lowering costs for consumers.
President Biden says corporations are recording record profits while Americans are paying higher prices. He says we need a fairer economy where workers and consumers, not CEOs and shareholders, come out ahead.
The top-performing messages center on lawmakers taking steps to address the broken supply chains that have driven prices up. The best-performing messages focus on job creation in domestic manufacturing and how lawmakers are working to ease bottlenecks and get goods to market. These polling results suggest that Democrats should emphasize the bipartisan nature of their efforts, illustrating that the parties can still come together to address problems that are of high salience to voters.
The other top-performing message among likely voters stresses the role of corporate greed in driving up prices. It identifies rebalancing corporate power in our economy as a key part of the solution to ease inflationary pressures. There is growing evidence of CEOs and shareholders raking in record profits by jacking up prices on consumers and shortchanging the workers who are essential for functioning supply chains.
Although many economists miss this key driver of price increases, it’s hiding in plain sight. In quarterly-earnings call after quarterly-earnings call, CEOs crow about their pricing strategies, and recent record-breaking profits in corporate America show clearly that while consumers are being squeezed by inflation, Wall Street is actually benefiting from the same trend.
Taken together, these findings suggest that addressing inflation concerns head on —rather than pivoting to other issue areas — is important. Likely voters rank inflation as the issue that they are most concerned about, and emphasizing policy solutions to lower prices and address price gouging is the best path forward when it comes to assuaging those concerns.
Results Among Democrats, Women, and People of Color
On the subject of inflation, Democrats can talk to their “base” in the same way they talk to voters they need to persuade. For both self-identifying Democrats and Black voters, messages that stress policy solutions, including the Build Back Better Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill, were most persuasive.
The messages around domestic manufacturing and record corporate profits also performed well with Democratic voters and Black voters. In general, we see the same cluster of high-performing messages among Black, Hispanic/Latino, and women voters, as well as among self-identifying moderates and white voters without a college degree.
Conclusion
Inflation represents a serious, though not impossible, messaging challenge. Messages that work highlight policy solutions to rising prices, including investing in domestic manufacturing capabilities, strengthening supply chains, and reining in corporate profiteering.
By cracking down on price gouging and pandemic profiteering — and making sustained public investments in our infrastructure, our supply chains, and our labor force — we can cultivate shared economic growth and build an economy that truly works for all of us.
Research on corporate profiteering can be found here.
Toplines for this polling can be found here.
Rakeen Mabud (@rakeen_mabud) is the Managing Director of Policy and Research and Chief Economist at the Groundwork Collaborative.
Ethan Winter (@EthanBWinter) is a senior analyst at Data for Progress.