A new poll identified two issues President Joe Biden can focus on to improve his messaging to voters: prices and energy.
The Blueprint poll released Thursday provided insights on how Biden can send a clearer and more effective message to voters as the 2024 presidential election nears.
“Biden must make his 2024 campaign a war on high prices — an area where he has the upper hand,” Blueprint’s head pollster Evan Roth Smith said in a press release. “Rather than waiting for media referees to award Biden points, the campaign must put them up on the scoreboard itself where voters can see.”
The poll revealed that a plurality of voters, 44%, think prices are slowly decreasing under Biden’s watch, while 36% think prices are rising.
Voters were asked whether 14 Biden policies would benefit them. Biden scored favorable marks in nine of the categories, and his most popular policies were investing in agricultural supply chains, with 78% support, banning companies from charging hidden “junk fees,” with 73% support, using antitrust to enforce price gouging laws, 71%, and expanding Social Security benefits, 68%.
His least popular policies in the poll were tax rebates for electric vehicles, with 73% opposed, canceling student loan debt, with 71% opposed, requiring labor union agreements for major construction projects, 67%, and capping the price of insulin for seniors, 67%.
Smith explained to the Washington Examiner why there is a “glimmer of hope” for Biden despite Blueprint and other pollsters having “seen pretty poor ratings for the president on the economy.”
One question Smith said Blueprint has asked voters is: “What can we as Democrats, and Blueprint as a Democratic organization, do to fix” the public’s poor perceptions of Biden’s economy? In this recent poll, he said there are some indicators.
Smith said many economic indicators are pointing in the right direction, but “what’s holding [Biden’s economic polling numbers] back is lingering inflation.”
The poll asked voters how several Biden policies are affecting inflation, and on eight issues, most voters said his policies would either decrease or not affect inflation, while on six issues, they said his policies would either increase or not affect it.
“Poll after poll has shown that voters are frustrated about prices, frustrated about good services, whether it’s food, gasoline, health insurance. Everything just feels more expensive than it was,” Smith said. “And that is really what’s holding back perceptions of Biden’s performance on the economy.”
Smith said Biden’s “actual energy policy is pretty closely aligned with exactly what voters want,” and alongside the issue of prices, the president should focus on this issue in his messaging to voters, especially young and independent voters.
“A plurality of voters think that presidents actually decreased oil and gas drilling in the United States, the exact opposite [is true],” Smith said. This leads to Biden being “beat over the head by activists within his own party.”
“They say this is antithetical to fighting climate change, and that’s always going to happen,” Smith said. “But then he doesn’t go out and take the win with voters who would really like to hear that he’s doing more oil exploration and gas drilling and increasing American production.”
Smith said if Biden would shift his focus toward his policies on energy and reducing prices, “we would see this reflected in polling,” especially in the Rust Belt and the Upper Midwest, which features several swing states critical to the 2024 election.
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The Blueprint poll surveyed 1,012 voters from Dec. 2 to Dec. 5, 2023. Blueprint Strategies is a polling company that leans left.
“These findings show there is fertile ground for Biden when it comes to messaging,” Smith said in a press release. “Biden should seize every opportunity to take credit for these accomplishments.”