Cost of living, economy looms large for Georgia voters, AJC poll finds

“I would like to get some semblance of stabilizing the influx of money into the economy that has just been printed willy-nilly,” said Patrick Delisle, a 55-year-old physical therapist from Cherokee County, who blames Biden for the rising prices. “It’s made the inflation problem worse.”

Many Biden supporters pointed to the pandemic and Trump’s policies as the root cause of price increases, including 57-year-old Marc White in Fulton.

“We have high inflation. Costs of good are still high, but the cost of goods went up during COVID, and who was president then?” the engineer said.

While the presidential choice is also a test of other values, the two chief candidates also have very different economic resumes. Biden as president has pushed programs that have poured money into semiconductors and electric vehicles, including huge investments in Georgia. He has also overseen both dramatic job growth and painful inflation.

Trump’s first term economic policy centered on tax cuts and tariffs. He has promised more of the same if elected again, in addition to mass deportations of immigrants. The economy, which had been growing when Trump took office, continued to expand until the start of the pandemic, when it crashed for two months as the government shut down the economy to slow the virus’ spread.

The recovery — fueled by massive spending under both the Trump and Biden administrations — was bumpy, with high unemployment and supply chain snarls that created shortages and higher prices. The unemployment rate in Georgia, which was 3.6% pre-pandemic, did not get back to that level until late summer of 2021 during Biden’s first year in office.

That jobless rate is 3.2% now.

Easy to ‘blame the government’

Overall, inflation since May 2019 has been about 22.6%, most of that since Biden took office, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. At one point in 2022, Atlanta prices were growing at a 10% annual clip.

Economists generally blame a combination of factors — the pandemic spending, supply chain woes, a tight labor market — though they disagree on how much blame to give each.

It’s too easy to blame the government, said L.D. Burroughs of Cobb County, who works in communications for a university.

“I think a lot of the public thinks it’s the federal government, but I think the supply chain is still weak,” said Burroughs, who declined to say which way she would vote. “And I think Congress should have a look at some of the profits.”

Whatever the causes, inflation has cooled dramatically.

In the past year, inflation overall has been 3.27%, lower than the increase in wages, according to the BLS. The price of some items — including many kinds of food — have not increased or have even fallen in that time. New leases for rents have been either flat or fallen. The price of gas peaked in 2022 after the Russian invasion of Ukraine at $4.54 a gallon for regular, but averaged about $3.35 in metro Atlanta on Thursday, up 11 cents in the past year, according to GasBuddy.com.

Yet the burst of inflation — the worst since the early 1980s — left a mark. And many voters have already picked a candidate to condemn.

“With inflation, all the prices just jumped up,” said Trump supporter Ron Prince, 80, of Newton County. “I blame Biden for that. I don’t know exactly why.”

By most of the indicators historically used, the economy is doing very well. Yet even many of the more affluent Georgians are downbeat.

About 49% of those making more than $150,000 said they were doing worse than a year ago, and 37% of them expect the economy to get worse in the coming year. Among those with incomes of $100,000 to $150,000, the same proportion said things have gotten worse and nearly 40% said they’re pessimistic about the coming year.

Explanations vary. Perhaps the influence of cable television, or residual pandemic trauma or the unexpected shock of inflation. Whatever the cause, even on those that remained employed and well-paid, the sting lingers, said economist Tom Smith of Emory University’s Goizueta Business School.

Periods of economic calm don’t make the impression on people that pain does, he said.

“You only remember when it rains on your birthday,” Smith said. “You don’t remember all the times it didn’t.”