Trump Surges in Arizona, Voters Blame Biden for Inflation
Battleground citizens pine for change, and for a return to prosperity & security.
President Trump vaults higher to a double-digit lead in the key battleground state of Arizona, up +10 points in a multi-candidate field in a new poll conducted for American Greatness by North Star Opinion Research. The survey of 600 likely voters in this key swing state questioned a sample universe that reflects the party registration and independent populations in Arizona and was conducted after the New York guilty verdict against Trump.
The breakdown on the larger field poll was Trump 42%, Biden 32%, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. at 13%, and 6% undecided. This +10% lead compares to a 4% lead for Trump in a March survey in Arizona done by the same pollster.
Looking at a two-man race, Trump also leads +6 points over Biden, 48-42%, with 11% undecided.
The clear driver of this expanded lead for Trump is deep and sustained unhappiness with the Biden economy. Despite constant media sermonizing about the supposedly strong economy, everyday citizens remain acutely aware of their own precarious economic circumstances.
For instance, a large recent poll reported by Bloomberg shows that fully 2/3s of middle-class Americans (65%) say they “struggle financially” right now. Even worse, their pessimism becomes ingrained, as those “facing economic hardship…don’t anticipate a change for the rest of their lives.”
That kind of long-term angst confirms a similar sentiment found in a March poll commissioned for my populist laborers’ organization, the League of American Workers, which found that only 18% of Arizona citizens believe the American Dream is still attainable for them.
Most of the current economic pain flows from punishing inflation – and voters blame Biden directly for this predicament. Specifically, a supermajority 69% of Arizona likely voters report that Biden is doing “not enough” to address inflation. That number rises to a stunning 75% for young voters aged 18-34. This dissatisfaction with Biden on the number one issue for young adults likely explains Trump’s surprising lead among that cohort in this American Greatness poll. In the multi-candidate horse race survey, Trump leads among both young adults and Hispanics, groups formerly considered reliably Democratic.
But inflation’s wrath is not consistent, and the sting of higher prices afflicts far more punishing damage upon groups that do not hold substantial assets that benefit from inflation, especially stocks and real estate. Accordingly, a lot of young adult and Hispanic strivers, who still live primarily off of wages, shun the failures of Biden. This development creates big cracks in the historic Democratic foundation.
Even the New York Times seems to recognize these challenges facing the economically aspirational in our society. The paper just posted a story titled “The Housing Market is Weird and Ugly” that details the current bifurcated housing market. Existing homeowners benefit from fast-rising home prices and locked-in long term low-rate mortgages, many from the Trump era. But new buyers flounder.
The Times concedes this point: “those who didn’t already own…have often had to choose between unaffordable rents and unaffordable home prices.” The article further notes that “buying a house, particularly for first-time buyers, is further out of reach than at any point in decades, or maybe ever.”
“Ever” is a very long time, indeed. But such are the dire, real-world ramifications of inflation, an economic malady that America had not known for over a generation before Biden and Harris. Now, as hard-working citizens grapple with this tough new economic quagmire, they pine for change, and for a return to the economic stewardship of President Donald Trump.
Steve Cortes is former senior advisor to President Trump, former commentator for Fox News and CNN, and president of the League of American Workers, a populist right pro-laborer advocacy group.