Steering the conversation toward the economy could actually help Democrats

With just two weeks until Election Day, recent polling suggests that support for the Democratic Party is eroding nationally in the final stretch of the midterm campaign.

Republicans have gained more than four points in the generic ballot since last month. Democrats enjoyed a one-point advantage in mid-September, but the GOP now leads by over three points, per RealClearPolitics’ average.

Not only is support for Democrats declining overall — it is also weakening among the very constituencies that the party has been courting for months. Since mid-September, Democrats have lost 9-points in the generic ballot with independents, 13-points with women, and 32-points with independent women, per the latest NY Times/Siena College poll. While we should not extrapolate too much from one survey, this trend is largely reflected in other public polls.

Following the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson ruling in June, Democrats reasoned that centering their midterm message around abortion would galvanize their base and bring these aforementioned groups into the fold, potentially enabling the party to overcome an unfavorable political climate and buck anti-incumbent historical midterm trends.

Despite Democrats’ best efforts to keep the country’s focus on abortion rights, unrelenting inflation has shifted the issues agenda back in the GOP’s favor — as Republicans are widely more trusted to manage the economy — while the Dobbs decision has moved further in the rearview. 

Over the summer, stories about red states imposing restrictive abortion bans dominated national news — like the one out of Ohio, where a 10-year-old girl who was raped was forced to cross state lines to get an abortion. But now, voters are hearing more about — and experiencing the consequences of — last month’s worse-than-expected inflation report, stock market volatility and the uptick in gas prices. 

Despite the economy reemerging as the top national concern, Democrats have continued running what is essentially a parallel campaign to that of Republicans, who have honed in on hitting Democrats for the high cost of living, as well as crime and the migrant crisis at the Southern border. 

While it is a reasonable political strategy to focus on the issues where you have the upper hand (abortion) rather than those where you don’t (the economy), recent polling indicates that Democrats have neglected talking about the cost of living at their own peril. 

The same NY Times/Siena poll finds that 44 percent of voters cite economic issues — either the economy generally (26 percent) or rising prices specifically (18 percent) — as the main problem facing the country, while just 5 percent name abortion. The same trend is true of women and independents.

Pocketbook concerns are clearly dominant, and by not messaging on these issues, Democrats are letting Republicans’ economy-focused attack ads — which are largely concentrated in battleground states and swing districts — go uncontested. Indeed, tracking by AdImpact finds that Republicans have outspent and out-aired Democrats by a ten-to-one margin on ads mentioning inflation. 

Moreover, when Democrats do discuss the economy, they largely aren’t talking about it in the right way, per veteran pollster Stan Greenberg. When the party touts strong macroeconomic metrics such as historically low unemployment rates and the passage of their spending bill — but avoids talking about rising prices — voters perceive it as disingenuous.

What Democrats should instead be doing, Greenberg argues, is making an effort in their advertising to inform voters that the party has a plan to lower the cost of living if reelected, while also highlighting how Republicans have opposed cutting costs for working people at every turn. 

How can Democrats counter the GOP’s cost-of-living hits? Run ads hammering Republicans for voting against capping insulin at an affordable level and opposing extending the child tax credit, which would have delivered $600 a month to working people. Ramp up attacks on GOP candidates who favor weakening broadly popular entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare. 

And most of all, drive home the point that Republicans don’t have an actual plan of their own to bring costs down for Americans if elected, but Democrats do. 

Admittedly, Democrats undertaking this strategy from the start would not have absolved the party of blame for the economy in the public’s mind. The electorate generally holds the president and party in power responsible for the economy, fair or not.  

But at the very least, Democrats could have put Republicans on the defensive about their voting record and policy positions, instead of essentially ceding the other side the most important midterm issue.

Furthermore, if Democrats were able to cut into Republicans’ lead on the economy, even marginally, voters in the middle — like independent women — may be more inclined to base their vote on secondary issues of importance, i.e. abortion, where Democrats have a clear edge. 

President Biden’s announcement last week that an additional 15 million barrels of oil would be released from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to bring down gas prices is ostensibly helpful. But absent a more robust communications effort by national Democrats that highlights how the party will continue working to lower costs, it won’t move the political needle. 

This is not to say that Democrats were wrong to capitalize on reproductive rights after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision. Americans broadly opposed overturning Roe v. Wade and largely side with Democrats on abortion. This issue has also energized the Democratic base, though Republicans will still likely enjoy a narrow turnout advantage.

However, by focusing only on abortion — even as voters zero in on inflation and prices — and neglecting to counter Republicans’ cost-of-living-focused attacks, the Democratic Party has done itself a great disservice. 

Douglas E. Schoen is a political consultant who served as an adviser to former President Clinton and to the 2020 presidential campaign of Michael Bloomberg. He is the author of “The End of Democracy? Russia and China on the Rise and America in Retreat.” Zoe Young is vice president of Schoen Cooperman Research.