Why Americans may begin to feel more positive about Bidenomics

Inflation hit a staggering peak of 9% in June of 2022 and has since dropped to 3.2%. While initially many Americans were not to perceptive of Biden's economic policies, labeled Bidenomics, the latest University of Michigan data on consumer confidence may say otherwise.

Yahoo Finance Senior Columnist Rick Newman joins the Live show to break down the public perception of Bidenomics as inflation seems to cool.

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Editor's note: This article was written by Nicholas Jacobino

Video Transcript

- We were reporting that despite inflation coming down, President Joe Biden's polling numbers were not reaping the rewards. Well, it seems now that may be changing and the voting public could be coming around. The economy showing signs of growth. Rick Newman has the very latest, Rick.

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RICK NEWMAN: Hey, guys. I still can't get over Akiko climbing into that tiny little fusion chamber. That made me feel a little bit dizzy. But at any rate, I'm going to move on. [CHUCKLES] So deep in the weeds of the University of Michigan Consumer Confidence Survey are these questions about what consumers think the inflation rate is going to be a year from now. And in the latest one that just came out, people said the median expectation was an inflation rate of 2.9% one year from now.

Guess what the-- guess what the expectation was when Joe Biden came into office in January of '21? They expected an inflation rate of 3%. So the expectation now is basically the same or even a little bit lower than when Biden came into office. And boy, does Biden wish he could go back to the days about three years ago when nobody was at all concerned about inflation because that has turned out to be his biggest problem.

So you know, Biden and everybody following the campaign are looking for-- I mean, we're reading the entrails here to try to get every insight into where this election might be headed. And we're seeing very small signs that things are tilting a little bit in Biden's favor. His standing is improving a little bit in polls where they ask, do you approve Joe Biden-- do you-- would you vote for Joe Biden or for Donald Trump? He's doing a little bit better there.

And I mean, we've been waiting all throughout the economy basically for inflation fever to break. And it does seem like it is breaking slowly. But this is the right trend for Biden because he's got seven months for people to start to believe inflation is really behind us and the economy actually is in pretty good shape. If that holds, that's good for Biden. But there are all kinds of other factors as we will be discussing during the next seven months. So not any definitive outcomes here yet.

AKIKO FUJITA: Rick, you mentioned some of the improvements, right, some of the gains that we've seen for Biden. How much of that is tied to the economy though?

RICK NEWMAN: That's a great question. So the old adage that goes back to the 1992 presidential campaign, it's the economy, stupid. That was Bill Clinton's campaign mantra. Just focus on the economy. Political analysts think the economy matters a little bit less these days. And I think it probably matters even less when the economy is pretty good and people are not unhappy about unemployment or other things.

However, you know, if the economy used to be 80% of what people voted on, maybe it's now 70%. I mean we know another big issue for some voters this time around is what's happening with migration and immigration at the border. All these migrants coming across. Biden scores very poorly on that. Trump does better.

People are-- you know, abortion rights, reproductive rights, that's another issue that might get more prominence than usual. And of course, Donald Trump himself is an outlier of a factor. So the economy still matters a lot, maybe just not quite as much as it used to.

AKIKO FUJITA: Yeah. We'll find out more and more over the next several months. Rick Newman, thanks so much for that.

RICK NEWMAN: Bye, guys.