Episode 302 — Business on the Ballot

For a majority of the episode, Davis, Connolly, and Gordon focus on the economic issues most pressing to the American people in this election cycle based on their findings from the Ross Financial Times poll. 

Partisanship & Information

Jerry Davis

“Tribe seems to be one of the most important driving forces… basically we're living in different worlds, paying attention to different news sources. Our understanding of the facts of the case are really different, and it's remarkable that I haven't seen any movement towards coming to a common viewpoint. It's hard to know what would be a news source that we all agreed, ‘Yeah, that one I believe.’ If you can't believe government statistics about inflation, it's gonna be really hard for us to come together with some common viewpoint … It's identity politics, but the identity that matters is party affiliation.” - Jerry Davis

Perceived inflation vs real inflation

Erik Gordon

“The numbers maybe do not capture the experience as lived by people … So, if you say to people, ‘look, inflation numbers are down,’ people say, your number says what it says, but price increases are our number one issue. [President Biden]'s got numbers on his side and keeps saying over and over again, ‘Listen up everybody, the numbers are good.’ And after hearing that month after month, people finally came to the conclusion of, ‘you're just completely disconnected from us.” - Erik Gordon

Gen Z & millennial housing challenges

Brian Connolly

“Based on the data that I've seen, wages have actually increased more in the last four years than a lot of prices, particularly for things like food and consumer goods. Housing prices have outpaced wage increases for a long time now, not just in the last three and a half years or four years of Biden being president. Home prices have outpaced wage increases, I think, over the last 20 or 30 years… We do see in the poll that, and I'm going back to our April polling data and what we learned about housing for younger folks, housing is the number one economic issue or top two or three issue they're concerned about. That's probably because people in their 20s and 30s are thinking about buying a house. Whereas if you're 60 and you've been living in your house for the last 30 years and you have no plans to buy a house, you may not be as concerned about that issue.” - Brian Connolly

Issues that unite voters

To close the conversation, the panel explores what the data collected from the Ross Financial Times poll shows about the concerns or goals that unite this group of voters, touching on competition with China, strong identification with political parties, and housing. 

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About the participants

Host: Jeff Karoub

Producers:  JT Godfrey and Jeff Karoub

Guests:  Professors Brian Connolly, Jerry Davis, and Erik Gordon

Audio Engineer: Jonah Brockman 

Editorial Production: Mads Henke