Inflation and the Economy Consistently Rank as Top Issues Among Likely Voters — and Here’s Our New Way To Ask Issue Importance
By Kirby Phares
Ahead of the 2024 election, voters are consistently indicating that the economy is one of their top issues. However, we have found that surveys may actually be underreporting the specific importance of inflation for voters this year. Moving forward, Data for Progress is using a new way to track issue importance, honing in on specific factors motivating respondents to select different issue areas as important to their vote.
Findings From Previous Issue Importance Questions
From July 2023 to February 2024, Data for Progress tracked likely voters’ most pressing concerns with the question: “Of the choices listed below, which do you think are the top three most important issues for Congress to focus on?” Our findings consistently indicate that economic issues have remained at the forefront throughout this period. Specifically, the choice labeled “jobs and the economy” has maintained a consistent level of importance, hovering around 30%. Inflation, which held the top spot for the majority of the time, fluctuated to 32% in July from a high of 40% in October.
Notably, while inflation and economic matters have remained steady as top priorities, immigration saw a notable uptick in importance among voters beginning in mid-2023. In October, immigration surpassed “jobs and the economy,” and continued to rank as the second-most important issue through the end of the year, largely driven by respondents who identified as Republican or lean Republican. The significance of immigration continued to rise, ultimately becoming the primary focus for voters in the latter half of January 2024. However, if “jobs and the economy” and inflation were combined into one category, that category would consistently be the top issue.
A New Way of Asking About Issue Importance
Following the 2022 midterms, when the economy and inflation were cited as the leading issues in pre-election polls, we began to question what aspects of the economy were top issues with regard to voting. This spurred our study to reconsider the common ways of asking about issue importance and how they can be improved. Our experiment focused on the question wording and formatting, as well as how we ask about the issues themselves.
With the 2024 elections looming, the study aims to assess more specifically which topics will have the most significant impact on these races — rather than just considering the salient issues for the country broadly.
We began by changing the question wording, from asking respondents their top issues for Congress to focus on, to instead asking: “In the voting booth, which of the following issues do you consider most when deciding which candidate to vote for?” While these questions are similar, we concluded that the voting booth question is likely more representative of the issues most important to likely voters.
We also decided to use a single-select format, asking voters about their most important issue rather than their top three issues. We then asked voters what their second-most important issue is when voting, with the same list of issues minus their first choice. The first-choice and second-choice format better allowed us to determine how voters prioritize different issues, while a multi-select format did not provide us with the same nuance.
A New Way to Ask About the Economy
Additionally, we studied how to understand the underlying reasons driving voters’ choices by making issue verbiage more neutral and then following up with more specific options. For example, “abortion rights” was simplified to “abortion.” If abortion was chosen as a top issue, respondents were asked in a follow-up question, “Thinking more about abortion, which of the following best describes why abortion is most important to you when considering who to vote for?” and were provided with the option to select “protecting abortion rights,” “limiting or stopping abortions,” or the opportunity to write in another reason.
This follow-up question particularly let us hone in on what voters meant when they selected economic terms such as “the economy.” The economic follow-up question specifically included options such as “inflation,” “economic growth,” “wages,” “immigrants taking American jobs,” “the stock market,” and “losing jobs to automation,” among others.
In a survey conducted between January 19–21, 2024, with the new single-select format, voters had the option to select “inflation” in the follow-up question if they initially chose “jobs and the economy” as their most important issue. Initially, 17% of voters selected “jobs and the economy” as most important, while 11% chose “inflation.” However, in the follow-up question, 24% of those who prioritized “jobs and the economy” indicated that inflation was the main reason for their selection — increasing inflation's importance from 11% to 15%. When combined, economic issues were most important to 28% of voters.
Aligning with the findings from our previous question on issue importance, our new experiment demonstrates that economic concerns are paramount in voters’ decision-making processes. Other issue-importance trackers ask about “jobs and the economy” and “inflation” separately, or only ask about “inflation” or “the economy.” Our research shows that consolidating the economy, jobs, and inflation into one category is the most effective approach for accurately gathering responses.
Therefore, we decided to combine “the economy, jobs, and inflation” into a single issue. In a separate survey conducted between January 26–27, 2024, 27% of voters identified “the economy, jobs, and inflation” as their top priority when deciding their vote.
Respondents were then prompted in the follow-up question to specify why that issue was important to them, enabling us to differentiate inflation from the broader economy and obtain more precise insights.
Among these respondents, 51% cited inflation as their primary concern within "the economy, jobs, and inflation" category — equating to 14% of the total sample. Compared with the previous survey, where the importance of inflation rose from 11% to 15% among respondents who prioritized "jobs and the economy," this figure indicates that the revised approach likely better captured voters who prioritized addressing inflation. Additionally, respondents selecting inflation were asked a second follow-up specific to their concerns about inflation, choosing between the costs of food, housing, gas, and utilities. The cost of food was the top concern for 68% of those voters, followed by housing (17%), utilities (8%), and gas (3%).
Conclusion
Moving forward, Data for Progress will be using a new issue-importance measure that asks voters to select their most important and second-most important issues when deciding which candidate to vote for, providing respondents with follow-up questions to specifically determine what factors are motivating their choice.
We also conclude that consolidating all economic issues into one initial category is the most effective method to ensure that inflation is not underrepresented as a concern among voters. The economy, particularly inflation, is one of the top issues for voters when deciding on a candidate, and Data for Progress will continue to track issue importance with this updated format throughout the election cycle.
Kirby Phares is a senior analyst at Data for Progress.