October 15 U.S. Briefing: Voters Want Change as Gas Prices Lift Inflation and Sales

Good morning. It’s Thursday, October 15. Three national stories are coming into focus: a new survey of voters ahead of the midterms, a sharp rise in wholesale prices, and retail sales that look stronger at first glance than they do when you separate out gasoline. They’re different measures, but together they put household costs at the center of today’s news.

First, the politics. In an AP-NORC poll released today, 85 percent of voters called the economy one of the most important issues in deciding their vote. Almost as many—84 percent—said that about the cost of living. Health care was a top issue for 69 percent, and 64 percent cited the war with Iran. The survey also found a broad desire for change: eight in ten voters said the country needs substantial change or complete upheaval in how it is run.

That appetite for change does not belong to just one party. AP-NORC found Democratic and independent voters especially likely to favor upheaval. Among Republican voters, nearly half favored substantial change. And two-thirds of voters said they were pessimistic about the state of U.S. politics. Those answers suggest dissatisfaction with more than a single policy, though they don’t tell us exactly what kind of change every respondent wants.

On the question of who should run Congress, 47 percent favored Democratic control of the House and 46 percent favored Democratic control of the Senate. Thirty-eight percent preferred Republicans to remain in charge of both chambers; 15 percent were unsure. President Trump’s overall job approval was 36 percent in the survey. Disapproval of his handling of the economy was 74 percent, rising to 79 percent on the cost of living. The distinction matters: these are voters’ views in a poll, not votes already cast or a prediction of who will win in November.

AP-NORC conducted the nationwide poll from October 8 through October 12, using online and telephone interviews. It reports 1,119 adult respondents and an overall sampling margin of error of plus or minus 3.9 percentage points. That’s a snapshot from last week, published today. The newly released economic reports give us another way to understand why prices are such a prominent campaign issue.

On Thursday, the Associated Press reported that U.S. wholesale inflation jumped last month by the most in four years as gasoline prices soared. Wholesale-price figures track prices received by producers, rather than what a household pays at the checkout. They can offer a clue about pressure moving through the economy, but a rise does not mean every business will pass along the same increase to customers. The captured AP report establishes the direction and the four-year comparison; it does not provide a detailed breakdown of the wholesale figures, so we won’t attach a percentage to that headline.

The separate retail-sales report offers a revealing contrast. U.S. retail sales rose eight-tenths of a percent in September from August, to 745 billion dollars, according to figures from the Census Bureau reported by TradeFlock. That headline suggests shoppers kept spending. But sales at gas stations rose 6.4 percent during the month. Leave gas stations out, and the increase in retail sales was just two-tenths of a percent. TradeFlock calculates that gas stations accounted for about 71 percent of the total dollar increase.

Here’s why that distinction matters. Retail sales measure dollars spent; the figures are not adjusted for price changes. A higher gas-station total can reflect drivers paying more for fuel, not necessarily buying more of it. The report does not show that Americans stopped shopping elsewhere: restaurant and bar sales rose in September, too. But it does mean the headline eight-tenths-percent gain, by itself, is a poor shortcut for judging how much more households were able to buy.

So the takeaway this morning is not that a poll explains an economic report, or that one month of spending determines an election. It’s that voters are telling pollsters the cost of living matters deeply to them, while today’s business headlines again show how much gasoline can shape the numbers Americans hear. Watch the difference between prices and purchasing power—and between a survey of voter sentiment and an election result. That’s the U.S. briefing for Thursday morning, October 15.